
FT MEADE 

GenCo 1 1 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

























AN INHERITANCE 


THE IVORY SERIES 


Each, 16mo, gilt top, 75 cents 


AMOS JUDD. By J. A. Mitchell 
Editor of 11 Life " 

IA. A Love Story. By Q 
[Arthur T. Quiller-Couch] 

THE SUICIDE CLUB 

By Robert Louis Stevenson 

IRRALIE’S BUSHRANGER 
By E. W. Hornung 

A MASTER SPIRIT 

By Harriet Prescott Spofford 

MADAME DELPHINE 
By George W. Cable 

ONE OF THE VISCONTI 
By Eva Wilder Brodhead 

A BOOK OF MARTYRS 
By Cornelia Atwood Pratt 

A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH 
By E. W. Hornung 

THE MAN WHO WINS 
By Robert Herrick 

AN INHERITANCE 

By Harriet Prescott Spofford 

Other Volumes to be announced 


AN INHERITANCE 


BY 

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 




NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1897 



Copyright, 1897, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


TROW DIRECTORY 

printing and bookbinding company 

*EW YORK 


AN INHERITANCE 


i 

It is not at all an unpleasant thing to 
come into a little property when it is at- 
tended by no personal loss. And there was 
really no personal loss, as people said, that 
could attend Miss Barbara Camperdoun’s 
inheritance from a cousin who, it was 
thought, had wished a number of years ago 
to be something nearer than a cousin, but 
had been promptly discouraged by that 
worthy lady. It was not that Miss Bar- 
bara, as her sister-in-law once said, had no 
idea of marrying anything less than a 
prince of the blood royal, and as no prince 
was proposing, had therefore remained sin- 
gle; but as she herself said, whatever ulti- 
mate reason she kept unspoken, she pre- 
ferred to be no one in particular in Boston, 


2 


AN INHERITANCE 


so far as a Camperdoun could be no one in 
particular, to being th$ first lady in a 
mountain village. 

Besides, she might not have been first lady, 
had she gone. The minister’s wife — no, a 
country minister’s wife, Miss Barbara assured 
herself, could hardly take precedence of her, 
with the minister more or less dependent on 
her good will. But the doctor’s wife — ah ! 
everyone was dependent on the good will of 
the doctor, that viceroy of life and death ; 
and Dr. Donner was a man of power. She 
remembered seeing him when breaking a 
horse for her uncle, a vast black brute of a 
Bellerophon, while she was a girl visiting at 
Woodsedge. Someone said that now he was 
content with horses other people had broken, 
for driving about the country on his prac- 
tice that went far and wide among the hills. 
She had seen him occasionally since then, at 
her brother’s house when he had come down 
about her cousin’s affairs, or about his own, 
from time to time. 

Miss Barbara had gone up to Woodsedge 


AN INHERITANCE 


3 


now, a day and night’s journey, to take pos- 
session of her house, bringing with her Luisa, 
her exceedingly pretty niece. It was at the 
close of a long and gay season, through 
which Luisa had danced and dined and 
lunched, gone to theatre and opera and pri- 
vate views and five-o’clock teas and dinner 
dances, posed in living pictures and assisted 
in skirt-dances given for charity to a femi- 
nine audience, and Miss Barbara said the 
mountain air would bring Luisa back to 
a normal standard of health and morals. 
And besides, she was not going alone, any- 
way ! 

Luisa was certainly below normal stand- 
ard now, sleepless by night, and languid 
and listless by day, and in danger of losing 
that wonderful bloom, softer than the tint 
on the petal of the sweetbrier rose, that 
flushed the oval of her cheek, and bright- 
ened the lustre of the dark eye under its 
drooping lid and shadowy lashes, and deep- 
ened the red of the tender, pulpy mouth. 
Miss Barbara had thought, apropos of her 


4 


AN INHERITANCE 


sister-in-law’s speech, and when she looked 
at Luisa’s lithe and slender shape, the 
abundance of her dark hair, the modelling 
of every feature, that if royal princes were 
really in question, here was a girl to be 
mentioned ! But although, of course, that 
was idle talk, Miss Barbara gave it to be 
understood that what money she had — and 
it was not inconsiderable — was going to 
Luisa Camperdoun, Luisa being the one 
thing in this world that the imperious lady 
loved better than — no, no, as well as her- 
self ; about as well, at any rate, as her own 
way. 

No ; Miss Barbara’s fortune was not by 
any means inconsiderable, as she had said. 
It had been a fair share of her father’s 
accumulations in the beginning ; and she 
had always lived with her brother, spend- 
ing but little, saying to people who ap- 
pealed for charity that she had charities of 
her own, and telling the children on birth- 
days and holidays that she was doing better 
for them in the future than if she gave them 


AN INHERITANCE 


5 


gifts now. Of course, all the connection 
and acquaintance spoke of Barbara’s parsi- 
mony ; and the amount of her savings and 
well-turned-over investments was put at va- 
rious large figures. 

The only deviation from her quiet way 
of holding her own was when she saw the 
charm that Luisa was going to develop. 
Then she had more expensive masters than 
the father thought he should afford, paying, 
however, only the difference in price ; and 
she had taken her a short European journey. 
When in her nineteenth year Luisa came 
out, Miss Barbara had supplied her with a 
half score of bouquets, lest she should not 
have enough, although, as it happened, she 
had too many ; she had given the girl every- 
thing which could adorn her beauty; she 
had bought Symphony tickets at nameless 
prices, and a box at the horse-show; and 
furbishing up her own old gowns, some of 
which might well have been heirlooms, she 
had chaperoned her at the opera; had sat 
out tiresome germans — Mrs. Camperdoun’s 


6 


AN INHERITANCE 


delicate health making her unequal to such 
fatigues — and had done her best as a dragon 
to keep off the youths who danced on a 
small capital, and to see that beauty had its 
rights. 

The youth who gave her the most trouble 
was Penny Gower, an attractive but impe- 
cunious young artist, who danced so fault- 
lessly that it left him with an exhausted air, 
as if he would really be quite unable to stand 
if he did not lean back upon past genera- 
tions, an air that was often found irresisti- 
ble. 

To tell the truth, the persistency with 
which Penrose Gower loitered about her 
was one of the reasons that made Miss 
Barbara so resolved upon Luisa’s going up 
into the hill country with her. Penny had 
been painting Luisa’s portrait — the work 
well under way before Miss Barbara knew 
of it. And as it had gone so far, and was 
supposed to be a labor of love, Miss Bar- 
bara, on her well-worn principle of getting 
something for nothing, had allowed the 


AN INHERITANCE 


7 


sittings to proceed, herself accompanying 
Luisa, however, in the place of the maid, 
or of Helen Reynolds, or other victim of 
the hour. But the presence of Miss Bar- 
bara had brought back the old exhaustion 
to Penny’s manner, and the picture’s prog- 
ress had been too slow for Miss Barbara’s 
impatient habit. 

“That young man,” she said, “must 
have the tired feeling you read of in the 
patent medicine advertisements.” 

“ She has the stony stare of the gorgon, 
when she puts up her glass,” said Penny, 
as he was walking on the avenue with 
Luisa. “ She simply paralyzes me ; I 
can’t have her coming to the studio, don’t 
you know. I shall find the picture turning 
into a likeness of her.” 

“Do it! ” exclaimed Luisa. “Do it! 
It will make your fortune ! Composite 
picture of a Boston family ! Hereditary 
traits coming to the top ’ ’ 

“Well, I didn’t suppose you cared,” 
declared Penny. “ But I care.” 


8 


AN INHERITANCE 


“ Pshaw ! ” said Luisa. 

“A man with a heart in his body,” said 
Penny, flicking a pebble out of the way 
with his stick, as they swept on past the 
congregated nurses and luxurious babies 
who monopolize that way, “ ought to keep 
at a distance from you ! ’ * 

“Then you are all right,” said Luisa, 
gayly. 

“You know the only reason I haven’t a 
heart is ” 

“Oh, Penny, Penny!” cried Luisa. 
“ Why will you talk of what you know 
nothing ! And didn’t you learn in your 
anatomy class that the heart is a delicate 
organ and will never endure being bandied 
about so ? It runs a risk of being broken ; 
and then what will it be good for ? ” 

“To dangle at your belt,” he said, 
moodily. 

“ How you mix metaphors ! One would 
think I carried scalps at my belt ! ” 

“ When you are out on the love-path. 
But ” 


AN INHERITANCE 


9 


“ Oh, I forgot to tell you ! I am going 

away. Going with Aunt Barbara ” 

“ Going away ! ” said Penny, blankly. 

“ Yes, into the wilderness.” 

“ And the portrait ? ” 

“ Oh, turn it to the wall.” 

“ Luisa ! The lovely thing — why, my 
whole heart is in it ! ” 

“ There you go again ! Well, let your 
heart stay in it, and it will be perfectly safe.” 

“ I believe you have no more heart your- 
self than there is in that picture ! ’ * 

“ You just said there was a heart in it. 
Yours, I believe. So you’re wrong there, 
you see. But I’m coming home. At least 
I suppose I’m coming home,” said Luisa, 
rather ruefully. “ When one is in Aunt 
Barbara’s hands one is never sure of any- 
thing. She has come into some property 
up there ; an old family place, and all that. 
And she will have me go with her — and it’s 
very provoking just now, and that’s the 
truth ! ” 

“ Well, then,” said Penny, brightening. 


IO 


AN INHERITANCE 


“ Well, then. It’s Woodsedge. Up back 
of the mountains, a perfectly lovely place for 
a painter to recreate.” And Luisa’s face 
was the color of a carnation. “ Now you’ll 
say I haven’t any heart ! ” she said. “ Oh, 
dear! ” pausing a moment at the crossing, 
bending forward, and looking over to the 
river, “ isn’t that Helen and Anne? Yes, 
it is; they are going down the alley. Oh, 
the crews are out ! ’ ’ 

“ I don’t care anything about the crews ! ” 
exclaimed Penny. 

“ Good-by, then ; I do.” 

And the naughty coquette was hurrying 
away through Gloucester Street, a little 
afraid, a little ashamed, a little amused, and 
leaving Penny disconsolate — Penny who was 
madly in love with her color and her out- 
lines, her eyes and her dimples, and thought 
he was in love with her ; Penny whom she 
liked very well, whose devotion she liked 
very well, whom she found it pleasant to 
keep in evidence, but whom she knew it 
would never do in the world for her to 


AN INHERITANCE 


1 1 


marry, even if she had wished, which she 
didn’t. Very few men, to be sure, had such 
eyes as Penny — black as a gypsy’s, and that 
sometimes seemed to strike sparks. But then 
man cannot live on eyes alone, Luisa had 
said. He was a handsome fellow, with his 
dark, smooth skin ; although, to be sure, his 
nose was large. But, there, he hadn’t a 
cent ; so what was the use ? 

She had reached the corner, when she 
stopped to gather up her skirt and glance 
over her shoulder. Penny was standing 
where she left him, leaning back a little on 
his stick ; but the girl who had accosted 
him — those nodding plumes, the chinchilla 
capes, that bright plaid of the silken skirt- 
lining blowing out on the wind that eddied 
all about the wearer — Luisa murmured to 
herself that she never could imagine what 
Penny Gower saw to flirt with in that ab- 
surd Fanny Fairfield ! 

So Miss Barbara had come up to Woods- 
edge, her nerves very much racked by the 
day and night’s travel ; and after resting 


12 


AN INHERITANCE 


another day and night, had proceeded to ex- 
plore the house and feel herself in possession 
of her new property. 

The commercial value of the property here 
was, of course, nothing at all to her in com- 
parison with its sentimental value. She went 
over the house with Luisa, somewhat to the 
disgust of old Martha, who had been undis- 
puted mistress, servant, nurse, and friend, 
and who now had to learn that there was 
but one mistress where Miss Barbara was; 
and she pointed out its family features — the 
room where her grandfather was born, the 
room where his mother used to sit in state 
and receive homage of the lesser people, 
their pictures — it was no wonder that Miss 
Barbara was an imperious person. There 
was still much of the beautiful French 
porcelain about, a couple of hundred years 
old, perhaps, that had been brought up into 
the wilderness on the backs of men who 
knew what a misstep meant, and some of 
the antique silver. 

“It’s a real find,” said Miss Barbara. 


AN INHERITANCE 


13 


“ To think of Launce eating with a gold 
spoon up here in the Ultima Thule every 
day of his silly life, and taking pleasure in 
it! ” 

“ They will be lovely for afternoon teas,” 
said Luisa. 

‘ ‘ This old Martha must be a very care- 
ful person ; perhaps she will do to keep on 
with some others. I don’t know but we 
shall have to turn the place into a summer 
mansion, after all, and bring up your father 
and mother and Bob and the boys. It has 
every requisite, you see — ancestral quality, 
numberless rooms, plenty of land — Good- 
ness, what a gardener can make of these 
grounds! — mountain air — and, bless my 
soul, what scenery ! ” lifting her lorgnon to 
look out, a little patronizingly, at the great 
mountains veiled with sunshine and purple 
that seemed to be offering her their hospi- 
tality. 

“ We can have golf links ” 

“If you want. Croquet is good enough 
for me, though.” 


14 


AN INHERITANCE 


“Well, as you never play either, Aunt 
Barbara ’ ’ 

“To be sure, the boys will cry havoc 
and let loose the dogs of war here and get 
into that old bog,” said Miss Barbara, pur- 
suing her own thoughts. “I don’t know 
if I will have them this year, at any rate. 
You and I can be very comfortable here 
without them for one summer ’ ’ 

* ‘ The whole summer ? ’ ’ cried Luisa, in 
dismay. 

“ The whole summer. You are run 
down, and need a good rest from dancing 
and flirting.” 

“ Well, I sha’n’t build up if I am bored 
to death with nothing to do and no one to 
see.” 

“You shall have ahorse. And here is 
this great Bursar for protector. I never did 
like a mastiff before ; but he seems to have 
taken quite a fancy to us. And you can 
roam the country with him, and be out- 
doors most of the time.” 

“ I shall simply die ! ” 


AN INHERITANCE 


15 


“ Oh, no. There’s a very good doctor 
here, I believe. Yes, we might do worse. 
And we’ll try it.” 

“ Aunt Barbara, you look exactly like 
that old portrait, the last one in the lower 
hall.” 

“ I ? We used to call her the Iron Lady. 
She was a grandmother or a great-grand- 
mother somewhere. ’ ’ 

“ That’s what it means then — your iron 
will. Wouldn’t Penny have a fine time 
with these portraits ! ” 

“ Oh ! Penny!” 

“ The strange old masks ! It seems as if 
we either had more ancestors than other 
people — and a queer lot, too — or else that 
they had a furious habit of hanging them- 
selves ’ ’ 

“ Luisa ! ” said Miss Barbara. “ How you 
do let your tongue run away with you ! ’ ’ 

4 ‘Why, what earthly harm in hanging 
themselves on the wall in gilt frames? No, 
some of them are old carved wood, aren’t 
they ? Why, what of it ? They never any 


i6 


AN INHERITANCE 


of them paid the penalty of their crimes at 
the rope’s end, did they ? ” 

“I never knew they committed any 
crimes,” said Miss Barbara, coldly. But 
she was quite white for a few moments. 
She alone, perhaps, a keeper of traditions, 
knew who they were in every generation of 
the Camperdouns that had themselves pulled 
down the eternal shadows about them, as 
her young sister Lona had done, with her 
own hands. She had always tried to keep 
the whole subject out of her thoughts — it 
was never spoken of before the children — 
and her iron will held her in good stead 
there. She pulled herself together now. 
“ Well, there were a good many of them,” 
she said. “ I suppose travelling portrait- 

painters happened along ” 

“ The very thing for Penny ! I’ll write 
him how to turn his summer to account ! ’ ’ 

“ Oh, let Penny rest ! ” 

“ Aunt Barbara, you are dangerously near 
slang. Penny could take his brush and turn 
those ogres, with their eyes looking all ways 


AN INHERITANCE 


17 


of a Sunday, into really valuable antiquities. 
I’m sure that going through the upper halls 
at midnight here I shall have to run. I 
shall know the house is haunted. What 
if a moonbeam suddenly lights up that pale 
girl whose eyes look as if she were out of 
her head — they are, anyway ” 

“ There, there, Luisa, don’t cultivate 
ridiculous notions ! You will be very proud 
of these old portraits some day. Yes, the 
more I see the house and place, the better 
I think of it all and its possibilities. And 
as for Penny — there, Luisa, don’t let me 
hear anything more about him. He bored 
me to death before I left town, and I should 
like to have one place free from him. Now, 
you take Bursar and run along. I am go- 
ing through the papers in Cousin Launce’s 
desks. I mean to do the thing up thor- 
oughly, and know just where I stand, and 
all about it.” 

“Poor Aunt Barbara! It’s an awful 
task. Can’t I help you? Let me have 
some of them ” 


i8 


AN INHERITANCE 


“ Didn’t you hear me say I was going 
through them myself? What good would 
it do me to have you read them ? Besides, 
if Launce had not left them here I shouldn’t 
feel as if he were willing I should read 
them. To be sure, he may have forgotten 
to destroy them. He — he — was not per- 
fectly well in his last years. However, ” 
said Miss Barbara, in a more sprightly 
manner, “I should have had the freedom 
of everything if he had had his way. So 
I sha’n’t hesitate. But I know he did 
not mean you should overlook his papers, 
at any rate.” 

“All right, then,” said Luisa. “I am 
sure I don’t want to.” And she pursed 
her pretty lips in a whistle that Bursar, 
suffering from loneliness, bounded to hear, 
and was off with him into the overrun 
and long-neglected garden, where the spring 
was just beginning to pout in leaf and bud 
of the old primroses and sweetbriers and 
spice-buds and honeysuckles. “I suppose,” 
said Luisa, touching the long, red sprays 


AN INHERITANCE 


*9 


of the bare climbing roses half tenderly, 
“ that the women imprisoned here in their 
lonely lives loved every inch of you. I 
dare say there was some poor sweet girl 
— I will trim you now and help you for 
their sakes. I shall really feel as if I were 
doing something for them. I must have 
had, all told, so much gayer a life than 
they. * * 

And she began to disentangle the stems, 
and went searching for a trowel to open 
the earth around their roots, old Martha 
looking at her askance from the kitchen 
window. But at that, Bursar wanted a 
frolic, or perhaps he recognized Brow trot- 
ting along after the doctor’s gig, for he 
was over the wall like a ball, and Luisa, 
running to the gate and throwing it open, 
rushed almost into the arms of a young 
girl, into whose face an apple-blossom color 
had just mounted — a lovely young girl with 
a sort of ivory fairness on her perfect feat- 
ures, and with eyes like stars in midnight 
blue, and pale blonde hair in great masses, 


20 


AN INHERITANCE 


and a smile like sunshine, as superbly 
straight and tall a young girl as Botticelli’s 
Flora. 

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Luisa; 
“ I was afraid the dog would run away.” 

“ He has,” said the young girl, smiling. 
“ He won’t come back to-day. He loves 
to go with Brow and the doctor. But he’s 
all right. I suppose — I suppose,” she said, 
hesitatingly, and looking at Luisa a little 
wistfully, “ that you are Miss Camperdoun. 
And I am Mary Swann. My father is the 
minister, you know. You are working in 
the garden. Don’t you want to let me 
help you ? I am a famous gardener. ’ ’ 

“I was going to work in the garden,” 
said Luisa, “and I should have been de- 
lighted to have you help me. But now 
we will sit down on this bench and have 
Martha bring us some lemonade and sweet 
cakes. Poor old Martha ! She thinks I am 
the woman of Babylon now ; but she is go- 
ing to adore me before the summer is over. 
And you shall tell me about this place, 


AN INHERITANCE 


21 


so that I can find my way — I mean among 
the people. As for these mountains, did 
you ever know anything like them ? I 
never did. They look as if they were made 
of sunshine and purple chiffon. I suppose 
they can be ugly enough when it rains, 
though.” 

“ No, never, never ! ” 

“ Oh, you love them, I see, just as I love 
Boylston Street, and the milliners’ windows, 
and Englander’s and the Common, and the 
Back Bay fens, and all. Well, you are the 
minister’s daughter,” leaning forward, her 
elbows on her knees, and surveying her. 
“ I suppose you are awfully good. Who 
was that youth I saw then — tall, blonde, 
with black eyebrows, going up the road ? 
There he is, looking round now,” said 
Luisa, half turning to peer through the 
crack of the open, back -garden gate. 

“That is John Donner,” said Mary 
Swann, and the apple-blossom color became 
that of a damask rose. 

“That is John Donner, is it?” said 


22 


AN INHERITANCE 


Luisa, looking at her with a bubbling laugh. 
“And now, tell me all about John Don- 
ner.” And the two girls were on the way 
to be friends without more ado. 

It was at the same moment that Luisa 
had run for the trowel that a similar sensa- 
tion of pity for cribbed and cabined lives 
passed here touched Miss Barbara with the 
shiver that people say you have when some 
one is stepping on your grave. 

“ This is nonsense,” said Miss Barbara, 
and then she wiped her reading-glasses and 
adjusted herself to her task. 

It was not a very interesting task at first — 
Miss Barbara’s. There were copies of vari- 
ous old wills and decrees of court ; the 
Camperdouns had been a litigious race. 
There were deeds of land and woodland, 
which she examined carefully ; and there 
were old account-books, which she handled 
more cursorily; and there were some dia- 
ries — brief, threadbare statements of the 
days of dull and simple lives ; and then 
there were old letters. 


AN INHERITANCE 


2 3 


They were yellow, and falling apart in 
folds, these letters. Here was one — a love- 
letter? Yet, in what stilted phrase! But 
out of it dropped a pressed and faded rose, 
and all the pride and passion hidden in the 
stately words were revealed in the flower. 
A tear sprang in Miss Barbara’s eye ; they 
were her own people. She felt how precious 
the pompous and sounding old letter once 
had been. Here was the epistle her grand- 
father had sent from the Indies, whither he 
had sailed, beginning, “Esteemed Wife.” 
And, yes, here was the reply, “ My Hon- 
ored Husband.” Were they really alive 
then, these people ? Did their hearts beat ? 
A still shining little lock of a dead baby’s 
hair, that she had sent him as if he must 
have something to touch of the child born 
and dead in his absence, fell from the next 
letter and answered her. 

Here were her own letters to her Cousin 
Launce, among them the one in which she 
had refused to marry him. “ We are cous- 
ins,” she had said in it, “and that might 


24 


AN INHERITANCE 


be bad enough if we were all as other 
people, we Camperdouns. But with the 
dark possibility that hangs over every one 
of us, it would be inviting ruin. Perhaps 
we would better not see each other often, 
if ever. I shall not marry.” 

His answer had been brief and to the 
point : “ Neither shall I.” 

Plainly, he had lived up to his determi- 
nation. There were no love-letters from 
other women. There were a few business 
letters, on the backs of which he had noted 
memoranda, a passing thought, an extract 
of something he had been reading, one or 
two letters from friends — one where the 
signature caught her eye first, John Donner, 
the same name as that at the foot of the 
letter lately announcing her cousin’s death 
and her inheritance; Dr. Donner telling 
her she was the executor of Mr. Camper - 
doun’s will, made many years ago. 

“ I don’t know now whether I am eaves- 
dropping or not,” said Miss Barbara. 
‘ ‘He’s alive — but it’s part of the business, 


AN INHERITANCE 


25 


I suppose. All the same ’ ' and she 

smoothed out the old letter, as she had done 
the others, and read : 

“ Thanks to you, dear boy, the work is 
over, and he that was Rusticus salutes you 
Medicus. Nor shall I be so long as I had 
feared in paying what it cost. I am paying 
what it cost now. 

“I am bringing a wife to Woodsedge. 
That surprises you. It did me. 

“ Of course, you know, remembering the 
‘nights we had in Egypt,’ that it was no 
thought of mine. But while I was at work, 
some good friends saw the chance and 
smoothed the way. And I simply fell in — 
with their suggestion. She has — let me tell 
you — a little pot of money. With that I 
shall look up my debts, and buy old Pil- 
cott’s place and practice in Woodsedge ; I 
always liked that house. I shall turn the 
place into a stock-farm, and start a new 
breed of horses — do what I must in the 
way of my profession, and no more. And 


2 6 


AN INHERITANCE 


for the rest, there shall be marauding of the 
hills with you, and all the pleasures of our 
youth so long as youth lasts. 

“The only trouble is that she may wish to 
make a man walk too straight a line. Her 
own lines are very straight — a girl who 
never was young, and who looks at life 
through the narrow chink of the church 
door. Oh, well, it’s a hard world, and 
very few of us get out of it alive. But when 
I remember your flashing Cousin Barbara, 
when I remember the pretty girls across the 
hills and far away 

“ There it is, old fellow. I had to pour 
it out or die, and you are all I have. But 
keep it to yourself. It is Mrs. Donner, you 
know. And Mrs. Donner shall be treated 
with respect. But a wife is not the end of 
the world, my boy. A hard world ? No 
it isn’t, no it isn’t ! It’s a good, gay world ! 
And with many a bout before us yet, I am 
yours to command, “John Donner.” 


Miss Barbara read the letter again. Some- 


AN INHERITANCE 27' 

how it made her heart stand still with a 
sense of the tragedy in it. 

“ Was the man writing about his wife ? ” 
she said, as she folded it up and put it back 
into the desk with the rest of the papers. 
“Was he writing of a woman who had 
given him not only her money but herself? 
What incredible baseness ! The lout — the 
scoundrel ! I could not have believed a 
man capable of it ! What a contemptible 
thief! Can it be — it is impossible! It 
can’t be — But it is! The man who 
wrote me of Launce’s death ; he has always 
been close to the poor fellow. But I don’t 
understand. That man who met us at the 
station, and drove us over here with what 
he called his lightning-shod team ; that 
silent man with his rugged face, his eyes 
that were set in his -head like wells and 
seemed to reflect the very blue of heaven 
and all its beneficence — why, that man 
looked as if he might be a messenger of 
God ! Dear me — it is the greatest mystery 
I ever came across. But there were never 


28 


AN INHERITANCE 


two John Donners here, and he is the one 
I saw breaking in that great black brute 
and looking like a centaur, nearly forty 
years ago, for I reminded him of it. Yes; 
and he had a sort of blind worship of 
Launce, I remember. Well, the longer you 
live the more you know,” said Miss Bar- 
bara. “I wouldn’t have thought,” she 
presently began again, “ I wouldn’t have 
thought any one out of state’s prison 
could — He ought to be in state’s prison 
now ; that’s where he ought to be ! That 
poor girl, that poor woman he married 
— I wonder what became of her ? ’ ’ And 
Miss Barbara’s eyes wandered dreamily to 
the window of the west parlor where she 
sat. “ Dear me!” she cried. “Do they 
have countesses up here in the woods? 
Who is that, I wonder ? ’ ’ And she sur- 
veyed with an admiring interest the figure 
moving slowly up the path, and bearing a 
parcel in her hands as if it were a crown 
upon a cushion ; a tall and slender person, 
a small, white shawl upon her shoulders, 


AN INHERITANCE 


29 

carrying herself and her napkin -covered dish 
with a gentle, high-bred air. “ I declare,” 
said Miss Barbara, aloud, “I should think 
a Copley had stepped out of a portrait, if 
her dress were silk and satin instead of hod- 
den gray. Who is it, Martha ? ” as pres- 
ently that dame opened the door, holding 
a platter of golden butter-balls set in great 
green leaves and bunches of scarlet blos- 
som. 

“ She wouldn’t come in, then,” said 
Martha, “ seein’s you wuz jes’ come, an’ 
tired, she ses. She’s jes’ fetched this over 
in the way of you feelin’ among friends. 
Ye needn’t set nothin’ in pertickler by it, 
though ; she’s doin’ ez much fer ev’ybuddy. 
She keeps the keys fer the poor o’ this 
perrish, an’ it’s a wide an’ along one,” said 
Martha, a little defiantly, as if Miss Barbara 
had challenged her. “ I do’ know w’at 
she’ll do in heaven with no poor nor sick 
nor dyin’ ter be seen ter. She’s been a-tend- 
in’ the wounded feet o’ the Lord ever sence 
she set her own in this place an’ come here 


3 ° 


AN INHERITANCE 


for its best blessing, arter the doctor him- 
self. It’s Mis’ Dr. Donner, ma’am.” 

“ Oh, Aunt Barbara,” cried Luisa, as she 
came into the west parlor, where Miss Bar- 
bara was still sitting, speechless, “ I’ve fallen 
in with the loveliest girl — a real wild rose of 
a girl, if she wasn’t so white — an exquisite 
creature ! But there must be something in 
the air here that makes people charming, for 
I met the most beautiful creature at the gate. 
She wasn’t young; she was — she was ” 

“ All of my age, Luisa. Say it,” said 
Miss Barbara. 

“And she wasn’t handsome; she wasn’t 
pretty. She was simply heavenly looking. 
Oh, one of the angels bearing the Grail 
might have looked just so. A middle-aged 
angel, you know.” 

“ She was bearing butter in a lordly dish,” 
said Miss Barbara, in reply. But to herself 
she said, “ And that was Dr. Donner’s wife. 
The woman with a pot of money. Well, 
there’s an old song I’ve heard that says, 
‘They went up through much tribulation.’ 
Perhaps she knows what it means.” 


II 


It had been a very unhappy woman that 
came so long ago to Woodsedge, a month’s 
bride, the wife of John Donner. 

Always a silent woman, now she was 
stricken dumb. In the month she had dis- 
covered what her pot of money meant. If 
she were not absolutely sure in the matter, 
her suspicion was as sad as certainty. 

She had lived the quiet life of her native 
seaport — more than ordinarily quiet, perhaps, 
owing to the long illness of her mother, 
whose death had been followed by that of 
her father — with few other pleasures than 
that of church-going, an eventless walk with 
a friend, an afternoon sail, maybe a lecture. 
Her temperament had been attuned to the 
calm and even tenor of the sick-room — if 
the sky were blue and the sun shone the 
pitch was rather higher than if the rain 
3i 


3 2 


AN INHERITANCE 


poured in a gray torrent ; but when the rain 
poured, a little more effort was given to 
maintain the tone. 

When she first saw John Donner, who had 
come down with a fellow-student from the 
medical school for a Sunday, something 
stirred in her heart which she had never felt 
before. She did not fairly know what it 
was; but perhaps under its stress her gaze 
rested on the young man a little longer than 
she was aware. When he lifted his own 
eyes and their glance happened to catch 
hers, a color dyed her face that made him 
look again, and the gray eyes under their 
straight black brows fell as swiftly. His 
friend saw the glance and the color, made 
a jest, and mentioned her money — a small 
enough sum of money, but riches to the 
young student helped to his profession by 
the kindness of Launce Camperdoun and 
others — and the rest was easy. He found 
that much warmth of expression was not 
needed ; Nancy had been bred in the ways 
where still waters run deep, and her life 


AN INHERITANCE 


33 


took the fresh force and swung over into its 
new channel, and flowed along there with 
the strength and depth of a great river. 

It was all the sweetest surprise to her. 
Her plain, immobile face and tall, gaunt fig- 
ure, her silence, her shyness, her ignorance 
of the social arts, had hindered admiration 
and attention ; she had never supposed she 
would have a lover. And suddenly heaven 
had opened to her. Certainly, in those 
bright days she did not feel as if she walked 
the earth. Yet no one would have dreamed 
from her serious demeanor that she was oc- 
cupied with anything but a business agree- 
ment. She loved the taking, handsome 
scamp with her whole heart. She was glad 
that she had money to give him ; she gave it 
all, and at once. She wished that she had 
beauty for him ; but what did it signify 
when he was so high-minded that he did not 
heed its absence, and looked for an inner 
beauty in her soul ? He imagined it there, 
she said in her humility; but for his sake 
she would make it grow there — the desert 


AN INHERITANCE 


34 

should blossom as the rose. She made few 
confidences to those about her — she hardly 
made a confidant of heaven; but into her 
formal prayer would sometimes escape his 
name as she implored the Lord’s best bless- 
ing for him, with every fibre of her being 
trembling. She little dreamed the fiery 
path they must tread together to reach that 
blessing. 

And then they were married and went 
away. He had a fancy to know a little of 
the wider world before going back among 
the hills. He had never had the means to 
do so before. He wanted to see some races, 
some great stables, to buy some Kentucky 
horses. She was a sort of necessary adjunct 
to the journey. He was not unkind to her ; 
he was even kind, after a fashion — now and 
then. As for her, she asked nothing more ; 
she did not know there was anything more 
to ask; she was his; they were to be to- 
gether all their lives. Perhaps her admiring 
worship was not unpleasing, at first ; it made 
him think that he was not wholly a bad fel- 


AN INHERITANCE 35 

low, when he thought of it at all. Then he 
didn’t care. Then he forgot it. 

But everything was so novel, she had no 
time to consider herself; the great world 
was slipping by her like the scenes of a 
panorama. Instead of caresses, she con- 
tented herself with his masterful air of cool 
proprietorship. She was a part of this 
world, she no longer stood outside; she 
had entered into its broad currents ; she was 
a wife, the wife of a man built on the scale 
of great men, noble, fine, past her imagin- 
ing — alas, as yet, all of her imagining ! 

She lived a month in her fool’s paradise. 
And she awoke one night in her room at 
the cheap hotel where he had left her 
while he pursued his pleasures, to see Dr. 
Donner sitting in a chair in the middle 
of the floor, his coat off and his hat on, 
and with other disarrangements of undress, 
his feet outstretched, his head hanging for- 
ward, and the gas blazing over him, lost 
in a drunken doze. 

He woke with a start at her exclamation, 


3 6 


AN INHERITANCE 


looked about in a bewildered way, and then 
his head fell forward again. “ Sold out! ” 
he was muttering to himself, in a thick 
undertone, with now and then an oath. 
“ Thass so, Donner. Gone for a shil’n’, 
gone ! Go’ the price, though,” he mum- 
bled again, fetching himself up from another 
doze, with a lurch on his chair. “ Sma’ 
price. Saddled with ’cumbrance. Good 
woman — good woman’s ever was — my Nan- 
nie O,” with a tipsy laugh; and one foot 
went up in a jig-step, to the danger of his 
equilibrium on the seat. “ Lock self in an’ 
los’ key,” he was babbling, presently again. 
“Go’ a jailer — damn fool! Plain’s they 
make ’em. Worse ’n a scarecrow,” he ex- 
claimed, angrily, at that. “Puts me in 
mind — stock-farm — horses — pot o’ money,” 
and he was nodding off again. “Treat her 
with respec’,” he gurgled then, with another 
start. “Mis’ Donner — no foolin’ — no foolin’ 
’ith Mis’ Donner — hear wha’ I say ? Pot o’ 
money — blamed ’cumbrance, all the same ! 
Married her money, didn’t marry her! ” 


AN INHERITANCE 


37 


For half an instant she supposed it was 
some sudden attack of illness. With the 
next breath she knew all about it. But it 
was as if a thunderbolt had struck her. She 
lay cold and stiff, unable to move hand or 
foot, a breath out of the very iciness of 
death blowing over her as she gazed at him. 
And then her eyes grew hot with scalding 
tears, and she was trembling like a leaf — her 
idol, her idol ! Everything was shattered 
with that, every hope, every joy. Her 
heart was lead. The world had come to 
an end. She gathered her senses with pain, 
to wish wildly that she were dead, that he 
— that he, her love, her husband, had died 
before this evil chance. And while she lay 
there half lifeless, now and again a long 
shudder sweeping her from top to toe, she 
heard these dreadful words. 

To tell the truth, they affected her but 
little at the time. His love of her, or the 
contrary, was of small consequence now. 
That went down in all the other ruin. 

But something must be done. She slipped 


38 AN INHERITANCE 

out of bed as soon as she could command 
her movements, and went to him, taking his 
hat, unbuttoning his collar, half holding her 
head away from his hideous breath, trying 
to remove his boots. He slowly opened 
and rolled his fiery eyes upon her. 

“ Lemme ’lone!” he said. “ Lemme 
’lone — cat ! ” And then, as if possessed of 
a sudden fury, he clenched his fist and lifted 
it to strike her, but paused with it doubled 
in the air. “ No,” he said. “Mis’ Don- 
ner. Treat her with respec’. All the 
same, ’cumbrance.” And he rose, swing- 
ing and steadying himself, stepped off with 
dignity on his heels, and fell forward on 
the side of the bed in a stupor. 

With all her strength and all the knowl- 
edge she had gained in her long experience 
of handling the sick, she at last got off a 
portion of his clothes, had a cold-water 
compress on his head, covered him up, put 
the room in order, and throwing on her 
own wrapper, sat down for her dreadful vigil 
with her dead happiness. 


AN INHERITANCE 


39 


It was in the gray of the morning when 
he awoke, with his brain emerging from the 
fervors that had obscured it, pushed away 
the compress from his aching head and saw 
her kneeling at the window, her hair drop- 
ping round her poor, bent face, her hands 
folded in an intensity of prayer, the curtain 
up, a great silver star shining over her in 
the whitening east. He looked at her a 
moment curiously. 

“ Damned rascal ! ” he said then to him- 
self. “ Don’t deserve her. Looks like a 
Saint Something. Who ever heard of a 
Saint Nancy?” And he laughed and 
turned over into sleep again. 

When he once more awoke, in the middle 
of the afternoon this time, she sat heating 
over a spirit-lamp a bowl of broth that she 
had ordered to the room. He watched her 
in silence. He was faint and dizzy — it 
seemed good to have some one caring for 
him. As she turned and met his eyes, he 
saw what havoc he had wrought in her. 

‘‘Made a beastly fool of myself last 


40 


AN INHERITANCE 


night, Nancy!” he said. “ Never hap- 
pened before. And sha’n’t happen again,” 
with which two lies he meant to comfort 
her. And he did. 

She ran to his side and threw her arms 
round him, and forgave him everything. 
And then, before he could lift his hand to 
caress her as he had intended, she remem- 
bered those words of his, those deadly bru- 
tal betraying words of his, and rose quickly 
and drew back out of his reach, frozen half 
to marble. 

‘ 4 No,” she said, “1 will believe you. 
It was an accident. A man like you will 
not let himself down to a lower level. You 
will not throw away your future.” 

He had expected reproaches and beseech- 
ings and implorations for her sake. She 
had put it all for his own sake. She didn’t 
cry out when she was hurt. Well, she was 
something of a thoroughbred, after all. 

He asked her, as soon as he was on his 
feet, what she would like for some last en- 
joyment before going home, expecting, of 


AN INHERITANCE 


41 


course, she would take a gala night in all 
the stir and light and color of the play. 
But she chose instead to hear a preacher 
who had a way of searching men’s souls, 
and he went along with her. It was a good 
while since he had been in any church. 
He was rather amused with himself. He 
looked about at the people, expecting to be 
amused by them, also. But whether it was 
the personality of the preacher, or his mes- 
sage, a light seemed to flash out of darkness 
upon John Donner, and although it was 
gone again directly, he had it to remember. 
He had also to remember the look in his 
wife’s face as the great music of choir and 
organ rolled over them — a look in the gray 
eyes that startled him with the might of 
something beyond his ken. “She shall 
have a pew of her own,” he promised him- 
self. 

And the next day they started for home. 
Home ! She half wondered at herself that 
she let him call it so, and that she went 
with him there. But in the long sleepless 


42 


AN INHERITANCE 


night of her first misery she had chosen her 
way. She could not go back to the place 
she had left ; nor had she the money to do 
so ; all her money was in his hands. To 
be sure, she could go to work — she was 
well and strong. “But I promised,” she 
said, “for better, for worse. I will not 
break my vow because his was false. He 
needs me, too. I must help him. And 
oh, I cannot, I cannot leave him ! Oh, 
no — oh, no; I love him still!” She had 
resolved before, that as he was unaware of 
his revelation on that drunken night, she 
would never let him know of it, or guess 
that she understood what he had done, or 
knew of his feeling of repugnance to her. 
She would appear to take things for granted. 
She had no expectation of ever changing 
his feeling. That was a thing impossible, 
she said, with her hopeless face, her stiff 
manner, her lack of the pretty graces of 
pretty women. In a day and night at a 
grand hotel she had seen beautiful ladies in 
beautiful toilets with a sort of alarm; if 


AN INHERITANCE 


43 


she had had their gowns she could not have 
worn them so ; she would not have had a 
notion how to dress her thin, sleek hair in 
the bewildering way of theirs. She com- 
prehended that there was a fine art of dress 
of which she was ignorant. She saw, too, 
that her husband was so indifferent to her 
that he was not even ashamed of her poor, 
home-made finery. She felt as if she would 
like to put on black, the deepest crape of 
mourning, and wear it the rest of her life ; 
she never did wear anything again but 
sombre tints and the gray and white which 
afterward became a sort of lovely fashion of 
her own. She had seen his glance follow- 
ing those women — she would be willing to 
be boiled in oil if she might become beau- 
tiful enough to be followed in that way by 
those eyes ! Wild fancy, hopeless thought ! 
And there was work to do. All that night 
in the rush and jolt of the cars through 
the defiles and up the grades of the hills, 
she prayed for John Donner’s soul, and a 
passion leaped into her prayer like the 


44 


AN INHERITANCE 


fresh blood to a wound, giving it life that it 
seemed must bring its answer. 

And so she took up the days at Woods- 
edge, in the old-fashioned white house upon 
the green, that John had always wanted and 
had now bought, with its paddocks and 
pastures up the hill behind it, on which he 
soon had a notable knot of horses — wild, 
lovely creatures, that gave a new life to the 
dark mountain on whose slope they gal- 
loped. 

It was well for Mrs. Donner that she had 
her household duties to attend to, a house- 
wife by nature and training, for otherwise 
she could not have endured, with all her 
other trouble, and the confronting of the 
strange women who called upon her, the 
presence of the dark and unfamiliar moun- 
tains. She wanted to push them off ; they 
worried and saddened and oppressed her ; 
she longed so for a sight, a sound, a smell 
of the sea, that sometimes her soul was sick 
within her. 

But she knew that she must put a stop to 


AN INHERITANCE 


45 


all that, for the little life that was coming 
must not be clouded by the mother’s 
gloom ; and she tried to think of everything 
that was bright and beautiful, and to go 
singing about her work all the glad, sweet 
hymns she knew. She hung out bits of 
string and wool for the building birds, and 
felt as if she had friends with the other 
mothers when they took them. But she 
had hard work to keep her cheer. 

She saw very little of her husband. She 
began to be sure that he was not obeying 
half the calls that she so laboriously an- 
swered at the door, and that when he came 
home late at night it was not because he had 
been with the sick or dying. She did not 
exactly know where he had been, of course. 
But in snatches of talk that she overheard 
when Launce Camperdoun was about, and 
in other ways, she was vaguely aware of the 
existence of the tavern in between the hills, 
of the race-course and trotting-park on the 
intervale beyond Loon Mountain, of Daw- 
lish’s on the other side of the quaking 


4 6 


AN INHERITANCE 


heath, and the roystering companions, the 
betting and card-playing there. As for the 
events that made the life of those places 
gay, she had no power of imagination to 
picture them, and she did not even conject- 
ure them. But she had such a reverence 
for her husband’s profession, as something 
that stood guard at the gates of life and 
death and waited on the will of God, that 
he was himself involved in it in a measure, 
even when she knew he was doing wrong ; 
he had received a consecration ; he must in 
the end come out right, and she ignored all 
but the end. 

In the meantime, as far as she could, she 
made up for his deficiencies by her own 
presence, and with little gifts out of the 
pantry-stores that had been sent from her 
old home when broken up, and out of 
her abundance of jellies ; and with delicate 
tisanes and broths from her kitchen, too, 
Mrs. Donner made herself welcome in many 
a sick-room long distances apart ; and being 
there, it was she, who had closed her moth- 


AN INHERITANCE 47 

er’s and her father’s eyes, who made it easier 
for these others to go out of life. 

One night when John came home from a 
long bout, he found that a patient whom he 
had neglected and forgotten had been taken 
home by her where she herself could do the 
nursing, and where the doctor must needs be 
on hand more or less. 

‘‘You are a good woman, Nancy,” he 
said, after a moment. 

“ I thought you would prefer it,” she re- 
plied, as if it had been not his suggestion 
but his wish. 

“But I am not going to have the house 
turned into a hospital for every acquain- 
tance-in-law, with you for head nurse,” he 
said. 

“ You shall if you like.” 

And with half an idea that it had been 
his wish, and with an interest that sur- 
prised himself, be bent all his skill to the 
cure ; and Dr. Donner’s resources were not 
small. 

The people who had wondered at Dr. 


48 


AN INHERITANCE 


Donner when he brought his wife to Woods- 
edge were beginning now to wonder at 
themselves. 

And then the long winter was at hand, 
with the snows borne on whistling winds, 
flying down the mountain passes and drift- 
ing deep in gorges and ravines, making it 
seem as if one were in a dead world. But 
although she could not always hinder the 
feeling of something near despair creeping 
over her, she never yielded to any longing 
to be dead herself. No, she desired to live 
— whether he wanted her or not, she had to 
live for John’s sake. But he had observed 
her so little that he was unaware of her con- 
dition till lately, and she was alone with 
the nurse who had happened in — the doctor 
off on a carouse at Dawlish’s — the night the 
little boy was born. 

It was a stinging piece of her mind that 
Martha, the nurse, gave Dr. Donner when 
he came home. 

“ That is right,” he said, laughing, “and 
well deserved. And then it would do you 


AN INHERITANCE 


49 


harm to keep that to yourself — too much 
venom in it ! Do you know,” he said, 
quite with the air of saying a pleasant 
thing, “if it was a hundred years ago you 
would be treated to the ducking-stool ” 

“ A hundred years ago or now, I know 
w’at you’d orter be treated to ! ” said 
Martha. 

“ Now,” he went on, “ we will see if you 
are as good a doctor as you are a scold.” 
And he satisfied himself that all was right. 
“ You have done me a good turn, Martha,” 
he said, “and I sha’n’t forget it,” and 
then he went to bed. 

But the sight of that white, patient face 
upon the pillow had sobered him more than 
Martha’s words had done; and he had 
kissed his wife and told her she had a son 
that was worth it all. 

He never seemed to feel that he had any 
share in the boy — a long, thin starveling of 
a child. He hardly ever looked at him ex- 
cept when his ailing required it. He never 
liked to see suffering ; he was too pleasure- 


So 


AN INHERITANCE 


loving for that. But something sent a thrill 
through him one night after his wife was 
about, as he saw her sitting by the fire with 
the child on her arm, a look of the rapture 
of love shining on her countenance. He 
stopped a moment and came back, and 
lifted the blanket away from the little face. 

“ Nancy,” he said, again, “ you are a 
good woman ! ’ ’ 

It was all he had to say, when a month 
later the little weakling was laid away in a 
span-long grave, that the snows had been 
hollowed out to make, and she had swal- 
lowed her tears, and taken home the child 
of a neighbor to lie in her child’s place till 
the mother should be well of a blasting 
fever. ‘‘It is our little son who is giving 
all he had to the baby,” she said, looking 
up with the sorrow still in her eyes. 

“Nancy always had beautiful eyes,” the 
doctor thought. 

And neither cock-main, nor dog-fight, 
nor a dance at Dawlish’s called Dr. Donner 
off till the baby’s mother was well enough 


AN INHERITANCE 51 

to take him back and leave Nancy’s arms 
empty again. 

There came to the door, not long after- 
ward, a worthless-looking woman, with her 
child in the bundle she carried, and followed 
by a dog. She wanted help to get back to 
her own parish, where she would go upon 
the town. 

“ What are you doing with that trollop ? ” 
the doctor asked, as he saw his wife take 
her in. 

“I thought perhaps we could help her,” 
she replied. And she bathed the woman’s 
sore feet and put her to bed ; and she gave 
the dog a bone ; and she washed the baby, 
a fine, crowing boy, and then went to the 
closet where her own baby’s clothes had 
been put away. She could not help the 
tears nor the kisses she gave the dear, soft 
wool and cambric things, she who had noth- 
ing left to kiss. But she dressed the lucky 
little stranger out in them from top to toe. 

“That was hard for you to do, Nancy,” 
said the doctor, seeing her. 


5 2 


AN INHERITANCE 


“ I wanted our little boy to take his part 
in helping in the world,’ ’ she replied. 

“ He is still alive to you, in a way.” 
He was drinking coffee, and Nancy’s coffee 
was a cordial. 

“ Oh, yes ! Even if not here. And do 
you know,” she said, timidly, and half 
under her breath, “ does it — does it not 
strike you — do you never feel a sort of 
— oh not pride — to think you are the — 
father of an angel ? ’ ’ 

“I?” roared John, with a clatter of 
laughter. “I? I never felt I was the 
father of a child. You and he are too good 
for me, I guess.” 

But it was, perhaps, a new wonder he 
felt concerning his wife, when he found 
that Sally with her boy and the dog Brow 
stayed on in Nancy’s kitchen. They were 
staying there many a long year after. 

Lonely or longing or sorry now, Nancy 
could not let herself be cast down. The 
house must be kept cheerful for its master’s 
sake. And then there was so much ready 


AN INHERITANCE 


53 


for her hand to do. In those days, and in 
that remote region, nurses were not to be 
had for the asking, and friends and neigh- 
bors helped out the need of every family 
when sickness came ; the squire’s wife and 
the minister’s served their turn, and already 
there was no one in all the township who 
had such a name for a good watcher as Mrs. 
Donner had. But often in the dead waste 
and middle of the night she drew aside the 
curtain of the sick-room to look out on the 
snowy wilderness and the white hillside 
where her baby lay. It was so hard that 
the cold snow should cover him, her little 
darling, when her heart yearned so to warm 
him on her breast ! But she said to herself 
that God hides His flowers in the bosom of 
the earth till summer shines again ; and she 
remembered pictures she had seen where 
the clouds about heaven were full of chil- 
dren’s faces. Sometimes she saw the full 
moon hang over that little grave like a great 
presence of brooding motherliness ; and she 
grew to love the solemn encampment of the 


54 


AN INHERITANCE 


hills round about it, and the dark -green firs 
that now and then shook down an avalanche 
of crusted snow with a far sweet thunder ; 
and the stars seemed to come and go be- 
tween the great purple crests, like spirits 
keeping watch about that one little spot. 
Occasionally, when some member of the 
family rose early, that she might go home 
and have a short rest herself before it was 
yet light, she met her husband coming in 
the dawn from Dawlish’s, or from some of 
the cabins beyond Loon Mountain. If he 
were any way ashamed, he was still suffi- 
ciently master of himself to be a little en- 
tertained by the situation ; and it was a 
curious glance he gave her then out of the 
corner of his eyes, as something he could 
not make out or understand. But he knew 
perfectly well that she was supplementing 
his work — sometimes supplying its absence. 

It happened that once or twice in a way 
Dr. Donner, for some reason or other, 
whether compassion or a divine curiosity, 
had warmed to his work, had searched out 


AN INHERITANCE 


55 


many inventions to serve a patient, faithful 
by night and day with a faithfulness that 
fatigued his unwonted spirit, leaving no 
power of his will or secret of his art unused ; 
but nature being too strong for him, or the 
abuse of nature, the case had lapsed into 
failure ; and then the people whom he had 
attended were bitter about his methods and 
slandered his skill, and took care that he 
should know it. “And I must spend my 
life and waste my youth and be made a 
target for these blunderbusses!” he cried. 
“Oh, you know their calibre, Launce, but 
you can’t know their bore!” It used to 
cut him to the quick, however, as the re- 
proaches he had deserved had never cut 
him, and his wife’s resentment and fellow- 
feeling then were a balm to his heart. 
They gave him a kindlier mood in her re- 
gard, that desired her sympathy and for- 
bearance, and did more for her with him 
than all her simple goodness did. 

If people were often indignant with Dr. 
Donner, they were, on the whole, patient. 


56 


AN INHERITANCE 


There was no one else very near; they 
regarded his talent as prodigious, his heal- 
ing power as something special to himself. 
Now and then, if rarely, an interest in some 
malady seemed to take him and absorb 
him ; now and then he wrought some mira- 
cle. They fell into a way of saying that 
when the need was great enough Dr. Don- 
ner was always there. 

“The merest nonsense ! ” he said to his 
wife once, when he felt some extenuation 
necessary, a thing that a short time since 
would not have occurred to him. “ Brown- 
bread pills and a phial of clear water will 
work half the cures, and when I let them 
alone I am only helping nature do her own 
work. * * 

“But there is more,” she said, a little 
surprised at herself, yet perhaps taking 
courage because Launce Camperdoun was at 
the table. “To be a physician is to make 
a promise that one would give ’ ’ 

“ Everything required of a physician. 
Well, I do,” he said, in high good humor. 


AN INHERITANCE 


57 


“ I give them you. I do one part, you do 
the other. But look here, old lady, take 
care you don’t encroach.” 

* ‘Encroach ! ” she exclaimed, before she 
thought. 4 ‘ I should as soon think of en- 
croaching on the work of heaven ! Oh, 
you know,” she said, setting down her 
cup, “a doctor’s work is the work of 
heaven. He holds so many hearts in his 
hand. He gives life or death. He gives 
hope, comfort, relief. The people feel safe 
thinking of him. They lean on him. They 
love him. He brings them into the world, 
he makes the way easy for them going out. 
Even pain obeys him. He forgets himself. 
The weather doesn’t hinder him. Sick or 
well, storm or shine, he is all the time 
doing the work of his Master. Oh,” she 
added, looking up across the table, her face 
aglow, “ I didn’t mean to say so much, but 
it seems to me that there is no one in the 
world stands so near the Lord as he 
does ” 

“ Hold on, hold on ! ” cried John, with 


58 AN INHERITANCE 

a slightly difficult laugh. “Is it possible 
that I am all this ? ’ * 

“You must be. You are under doctors’ 
vows. ’ * 

“By George, Nancy! You are enough 
to put the spirit of it into a man ! ” 

“You builded better than you knew 
when you married that woman,” said 
Launce, as they went out together. 

“ By God, I did ! ” said John. 

He did not think it was encroaching 
when, a few weeks later, having left a pa- 
tient in extremity and forgotten how the 
time passed, he came back to find the 
mother resting comfortably with the new- 
born baby beside her, and his wife in at- 
tendance, she having gone when the third 
summons for him came, feeling she must 
risk everything both for the woman and in 
his behalf. 

There was not room for two in the gig, 
and he walked home in the thick night 
beside her, the horse’s head over his 
shoulder. 


AN INHERITANCE 59 

“ How did you know how? ” he asked, 
presently. 

“I didn’t,” she said. “But I had been 
with three or four cases, you know. And I 
had my own experience. I was expecting 
Martha every minute, and she came at the 
very last. And Mrs. Janes had to be taken 
care of. And oh, John, you had to be pro- 
tected, too ! And I just prayed God to help 
me. And it was life, and not death, you 
know, and that helped, too.” 

“That is the way God helped,” said 
John, in a low voice. “ Well, Nancy, you 
have saved me this time ! ’ ’ 

She went for the lantern, that he might 
put up the horse. He took it, and stooped 
and lifted her hand to his lips. She 
laughed, with a kind of childish pleasure. 
He swung the ray of the lantern up across 
her face. 

“ You are growing prettier every day, 
Nan,” he said. 

“No,” she answered, suddenly pale and 
cold again, “I am growing an old woman. 


6o 


AN INHERITANCE 


But we are very good friends, I think, 
John.” 

It happened that the next day was Sun- 
day. Nancy always went to meeting, and 
would have done so even had it not been 
expected that everyone in that community 
should regard the day as one of solemn 
ceremony, except the doctor, who in a 
measure was excused by reason of his du- 
ties. Save for the Sunday, now so long ago, 
when he brought her home, Dr. Donner 
had taken advantage of his privileges. 

“See Mis’ Donner,” said Deacon Ashly 
to his wife, as they jogged home together, 
“ w’en the doctor come inter meetin’ ter- 
day? She looked ’sif ’twouldn’t take much 
to make her drop. Kinder took by s’prise, 
mebbe. ’ ’ 

“ Sho ! I guess nothin’ he could du ’d 
take her by s’prise. She’s jest all tuckered 
out, being ’th Mis’ Janes overnight. Miry 
Dean was tellin’ me between meetin’ s. 
He’s be’n tendin’ out on her, an’ I s’ pose 
she thought Mis’ Janes was gone.” 


AN INHERITANCE 


6 1 


“ He tol’ me himself Mis' Janes wuz 
right as a trivet. So ’twarn’t thet. But 
I’ll tell ye what I think, Mis’ Ashly; I 
think Dawlish’s’ll hev seen the last o’ Dr. 
Donner afore long ! ’ ’ 

“I’ll believe it w’en I see it,” said Mrs. 
Ashly, grimly. 

“A good wife goes a great way to the 
makin’ of a good man, Mis’ Ashly,” said 
the deacon. 

“ Good or bad, Deacon Ashly,” said the 
worthy dame, with decision, “ there’s never 
be’n a doctor here between the hills that 
was Donner’s beat. Old Dr. Pilcott was 
well enough w’en he knowed jes’ w’at ailed 
ye, but Donner looks right inter the marrer. 
I do’ know’s I’d like to trust myself in his 
han’s w’en that black horse o’ his’n takes 
him home ’cause he can’t drive himself. 
But if I did, he’d fetch me thru ! ” 

11 P’r’aps so, p’r’aps so,” said the deacon. 

But fer my part, I like the man thet hes 
ter tend my mortle body or my immortle 
sperrit ter hev all his wits about him. ’ ’ 


62 


AN INHERITANCE 


“ Wal, part o’ Dr. Dormer’s wits is 
more’n most men-folks hes. Ef he alius 
hed the hull on ’em about him we shouldn’t 
keep him long up here ’tween the hills. 
They’d be a-wantin’ of him down ter Bos- 
ton quicker’n scat. I do’ know es it’s very 
profitable talk we’re a-havin’, Deacon Ash- 
ly. Did you see Miry’s new shawl ? I 
noted the fringe warn’t es long es mine by 
an inch. Hm. That’s a cur’ us text the 
preacher hed this mornin’. I alius thought 
it was a pretty varse. ‘ Woe unto the 
drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beau- 
ty is a fading flower.’ ’Twas a good sar- 
mon, though.” 

“ S’archin’,” said the deacon, “ s’ arch- 
in’ ! ” 

Whether Dr. Donner found it searching 
or not, the next Sabbath his wife, who had 
hitherto been the guest of the often empty 
Camperdoun pew, sat in a pew of her own, 
carpeted and cushioned in a way to allevi- 
ate that mortification of the flesh for which 
the village congregation had apparently ar- 


AN INHERITANCE 


63 


ranged the straight backs and narrow seats, 
and on which they would have looked with 
disfavor had it been for any one but Mrs. 
Donner. 


Ill 


It was at about this time that the epi- 
demic of fatal influenza broke out in Wood- 
sedge. There was no loitering possible 
then, no time, if it were wished, for any life 
at Dawlish’s, for any running of horses, for 
any meeting of sports between the hills ; 
the calls were too frequent, too urgent, the 
need was too apparent. But Dr. Donner 
rose to the moment. He had forty cases on 
his hands at once. If he lost very few, it 
was due as much to his wife as to himself, 
he said to someone afterward. “ I hate to 
tell you,” she would say, when he came 
home from a round of calls on patients des- 
perately ill, at midnight, wet through, per- 
haps, and tired to the ends of his fingers, 
“ but there are three other calls for you, and 
they all seem to need you so. There are 
your dry clothes hanging by the fire for 
64 


AN INHERITANCE 


65 


you to change. And you must take this 
thick, hot soup first. Mrs. Ashly is doing 
nicely. And I left the minister an hour 
ago sleeping like a baby.” And while he 
was gone she kept the fire alive, getting her 
naps only on the sofa, and was bright and 
ready for him, sometimes with a hot break- 
fast, when he came back. 

“ It is dreadful,” she sighed. “I am 
afraid you will be down yourself. But it 
seems as if you must go. I feel — oh, I hope 
it isn’t wicked ! — I almost feel as if you had 
only to say Talitha cumi , and they rise and 
walk.” 

“Not I ! Not I ! ” said John. “ So 
far from it that when I come to the bed- 
sides of the people, with nothing but my 
small skill between them and the power of 
the pest, I feel like a worm with a foot 
hanging over me. And when I have made 
a cure, if I have made it, I only feel like 
the same worm that the foot has failed to 
tread on ! ” 

Fortunately, the epidemic had passed, and 


66 


AN INHERITANCE 


the mild spring weather had brought hope 
and cheer, before Launce Camperdoun fell 
ill. 

Whether the letter from his Cousin Bar- 
bara had had anything to do with his con- 
dition or not, the fever that presently ap- 
peared increased, with symptoms involving 
the brain that gave the doctor a great deal 
of alarm. He had the more alarm that he 
knew the idiosyncrasy of the Camperdouns, 
and the danger there when the brain was 
called in question. For Launce Camper- 
doun had been his friend from long ago, his 
intimate even when he was employed on the 
big farm breaking the Camperdoun colts, 
his companion afterward in all those times 
when they had heard the chimes at mid- 
night, the strength, the daring, the fresh 
earthiness of the one feeling the subtlety and 
delicacy of a failing race in the other with 
almost a passionate sensibility. When 
Launce came into the property, knowing 
John Donner’s parts, he had helped him to 
his profession, often going down for a wild 


AN INHERITANCE 


67 


beat together about the town, where John 
always lost his way. “It takes heredity to 
know the Boston streets,” John used to say. 
And he had seen with Launce now and then 
at the Camperdoun cousin’s house what 
lovely women and gracious manners are. 
Now the doctor called up all he knew, 
cursed the time that he had been playing 
instead of learning more, bent to use every 
energy he had, sent for older doctors in 
consultation, let other patients get along as 
they could, lost no moment and no en- 
deavor in the struggle with this devouring 
fire, and hardly left the house by day or 
night unless upon compulsion of some more 
exacting or pitiable demand, worn and weary 
himself to exhaustion, every throb of that 
tortured brain striking like a sharp blow 
upon his own sensation. 

Martha, the nurse, came to help him, and 
stayed afterward the remainder of the man’s 
life. But he had sent her to rest that day, 
and it seemed to the doctor as if a minister 
of light had come into the room when his 


68 


AN INHERITANCE 


wife closed the door behind her and said, 
softly, “ They have sent for you to go down 
to Three Rivers — the Judge’s child. The 
ride in the wind will help you. I can keep 
on the ice-cap and the warm applications, 
and give the drops and attend to the nour- 
ishment. I am not afraid of his delirium. 
I am strong. You can trust me.” And 
he went, with a sort of preknowledge that 
on returning he should find Camperdoun 
better for that calm and cooling presence. 
And he did. There was something about 
Nancy that carried healing in its wake. 

I don’t know why it occurred to Dr. Don- 
ner to do as he did just then, except for a 
freak of light-heartedness at his patient’s 
improvement. “ He does not look as I 
expected,” he said, beckoning her into the 
next room. “ Has he had the drops from 
the blue phial? If you have forgotten I 
told you to give them I wouldn’t give that 
for his life ! ” as he snapped his fingers. 

“Oh! It isn’t possible!” whispered 
Nancy, clasping her hands. 


AN INHERITANCE 


69 


“What isn’t possible? Do you mean 
to tell me you forgot them?” flashing on 
her a strange glance from those keen blue 
eyes. 

“Yes,” she said, pale even in the half- 
light of the curtained place. 

“Think a moment. You may not re- 
member now. Perhaps you did give them 
at half-past three,” closing the door as he 
spoke. 

“No,” she said, with white lips. “I 
did not. Oh, do something ! Oh, save 
him, John! ” 

“Save him?” he repeated, laughing, 
taking her hand and leading her to a seat. 
“You have saved him ! He doesn’t look as 
I expected — he looks a great deal better. 
And, of course, you haven’t forgotten be- 
cause I never told you to remember ! ’ ’ 

“ Oh ! ” she said, pressing her fingers on 
her eyes to keep the tears from spurting. 
“ It has startled me so.” 

“You mean I have. It was cruel,” said 
John, still looking at her steadily. “ But I 


70 


AN INHERITANCE 


wanted to try you. To see if you would 

tell a lie ’ ’ 

“ No, no ! oh, no ! ” 

“ You will not, I see, to help yourself. I 
wonder if you would to help me.” 

“Oh, don’t you, don’t you ask me! ” 
“But if I were in difficulty about — 
Well, I will put it to you. If I am called 
into court for malpractice — that broken arm 
of Miss Turpey’s — and your testimony 
would clear me, testimony about which I 

would instruct you ” 

“ And not true ? ” 

“ Not true, of course.” 

“ Oh, don’t let me be summoned ! ” she 
cried, her hand over her mouth the next 
moment. “ Oh, John, don’t let me be 
tried so ! I could not ; oh, I could not ! ” 
“You would rather I went to prison, 
then ! ” 

“ Oh, no, no, no ! I would not testify 

against you. I would be silent ” 

“ That would be contempt of court ; and 
you would go to prison yourself.” 


AN INHERITANCE 


71 


“ I could go. I could be as happy there 
as anywhere. But, oh, if you could spare 
me that ! ” she half sobbed. “ I have tried 
to be a good wife — a helpmeet — to do my 
duty ” 

“A good wife! You are my good 
angel ! People call you Dr. Donner’s good 
angel ! ’ ’ And he leaned forward and kissed 
off the two great tears rolling down her face. 
“ By George ! but tears are salt,” he said, 
laughing. “ There, there, I’m a hardened 
villain, very like, but there’s no such case. 
I only wanted to see what is this stuff you 
are made of. I never saw anyone just like 
you, Nancy. I believe you are descended 
from one of the children Christ laid his 
hands on ! ” and although she knew it was 
profane she felt that it was pleasant. 

If she were a little angry, she was also 
a little glad. She never forgot, though, 
that he had no love for her — the sense of 
those old, wicked words of his was seldom 
out of her consciousness. But she was glad 
that he felt not unkindly toward her. She 


72 


AN INHERITANCE 


alternated the watches with him after that, 
till the immediate danger was over. And 
when the doctor was going on his daily 
rounds again, she came across the green with 
her little tempting dish, or her kindly pleas- 
ant talk, and let Martha off for an hour ; an 
hour in which she made the weak and sad 
man feel as if he had a home, and envy 
the other man who had married the girl of 
straight lines for her money. 

It was Mrs. Donner who detected first 
in Camperdoun’s melancholia symptoms of 
the degeneration that the doctor had dread- 
ed. “There is only one thing to do,” 
said John, “ and that is to reduce him 
to an animal, feed, and overfeed, cush- 
ion these rasped nerves in fat, and send 
new red blood to enrich the exhausted 
brain.” 

“Yes,” said Nancy. “And he will 
always be subject to attack ? ” 

“You will have it to see to as long as he 
lives,” said the doctor, looking at her care- 
fully. 


AN INHERITANCE 


73 


“It is very little to do,” she said. “ I 
am glad to do it.” 

“ My poor wife ! ” he said, “you mar- 
ried into trouble. But if there is any way 
known under heaven among men to hinder 
his becoming a victim to the family curse — 
But there isn’t; no, there isn’t! And, 
Nancy — somehow it hurts me — if I had 
been a better man he might have gone up 
with me instead of down — God knows ! 
But what’s done is done, and what’s to do 
is still to do. Possibly Camperdoun would 
have been much the same, anyway. ’ ’ 

“ I understand,” said Mrs. Donner. 

“ But I could give myself in his place,” 
the doctor went on, more as if to himself 
than to her, “and that’s a fact ! I never 
had anyone very near me since I was in 
boots. I think I have loved Camperdoun 
more than any living thing. You care for 
him, too, Nancy. By mighty ! he thinks 
well of you ! ’ ’ 

It was like a cold hand on her heart 
when he said he loved Camperdoun so dear- 


74 


AN INHERITANCE 


ly. But why be foolish ? She knew that 
already. And it was something that he 
made her so kindly his confidante — and 
then he had called her his wife ! 

The doctor came in one twilight when 
she had been with Camperdoun, as usual, an 
hour or two. He had been inclined to vio- 
lence, and she had soothed him, singing. 
She sat beside the brooding man, and sang, 

“ Art thou weary, art thou languid, 

Art thou sore distressed ? 

Come to me, saith One, and coming, 

Be at rest.” 

It was not much of a voice, hardly more 
than a sweet and gentle sigh set to tune. 

“ If I ask him to receive me, 

Will he say me nay? 

Not till earth, and not till heaven 
Pass away ! ” 

But as Dr. Donner paused and flung him- 
self into an arm-chair in the shadow, and 
saw her singing, the light on her face, 
white and wan, with a something pathetic 
about the mouth, but with lifted eyes that 


AN INHERITANCE 75 

seemed looking into heaven, he understood 
that she was doing her work neither for love 
of him now nor for love of the sufferer, but 
for the love of God, and only the love of 
them in him. 44 And I might have had the 
heart of that woman,” he thought; for he 
knew his deserts too well to suppose she 
could be caring for him now after the life 
he had led her these three years. And then, 
in a greater humility, the soul within him 
cried, 44 But what am I, that such a spirit 
bearing such a light walks through my life 
at all ? ” and he stole out as softly as he had 
entered. Opening his door that night, he 
was for the first time struck by the differ- 
ence between the interior of his house and 
that of the old Camperdoun mansion. He 
had bought the place of the Pilcott heirs, as 
it stood, bare but comfortable, and what 
pleasant look it had was owing only to 
Nancy’s home-making qualities. 44 It isn’t 
fit for her ! ” he exclaimed to himself. And 
when she came home from some of her calls 
of mercy one night, a print of Guercino’s 


7 6 


AN INHERITANCE 


Aurora hung over the fire in the parlor, and 
Murillo’s Madonna, with the moon beneath 
her feet, was looking down from the mantel 
of the sleeping-room. And after that, bit 
by bit, a vase, a cast, a lovely book, ap- 
peared in the house. “ He likes pleasant 
things about him,” thought Nancy. He 
had married her so viciously, he had neg- 
lected her so long, he could not tell her 
they were for her. 

One evening, when Camperdoun was 
quite himself again, Dr. Donner found his 
wife reading, as often before, to the con- 
valescent, and talking in the intervals in the 
confidential way that had grown up be- 
tween them. He waited a moment in the 
adjoining room. She was not a woman, as 
you know, of much culture or of more than 
average mental quality, but she had far 
more than the average capacity for loving. 

It was a little volume of Wordsworth she 
was holding; she had been reading some 
of the ballads that she felt had a kinship 
with the life of this hill country. “ We 


AN INHERITANCE 


77 


used to parse this in school,” she said, 
“ ‘ The Happy Warrior.’ I wonder if you 
will understand how it makes me think of 
my husband.” 

“ Of John ! ” cried Camperdoun. 

“I don’t mean altogether what he is — 
though he is so much,” she said, a little 
timidly, “ but of what he might be — will 
be. I think of him,” she said, opening 
the book again and reading, “ as one 

“ ‘ Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, 

And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train ! 

Turns his necessity to glorious gain,’ 

“ And then 

“ ‘ More able to endure 
As more exposed to suffering and distress ; 
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.’ 

“ And you yourself must see,” she said, 
turning the leaf, “ that his 

‘ 4 4 — powers shed round him in the common strife, 

Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 

A constant influence, a peculiar grace.’ 

“ And he never goes out in the night but I 
say to myself, 


78 


AN INHERITANCE 


“ ‘ Or if an unexpected call succeed, 

Come when it will, is equal to the need.' 

“Yes, yes,” she said, still running her 
eye along the page, “it is true of him all 
through ! And I know, I know, that when 
the end comes he will be the man who, 

“ 4 While the mortal mist is gathering, draws 

His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause.’ ” 

“ But, man alive,” said Mr. Camperdoun, 
“ that is about a soldier.” 

“And John is a soldier. You know — 
if he — if he has anything to encounter in 
himself and his surroundings,” said Nancy, 
hesitatingly. “ And there are the forces of 
nature he has to fight as he goes about the 
hills in sun and storm and wind and rain, 
by night and day. And there are the 
forces of evil in pain and suffering and sor- 
row that he fights with,” she exclaimed. 
“ And sometimes he fails, and so much 
more often they go down ! ’ ’ 

“Well, well, then, you are an eloquent 
little cuss — I mean customer. I beg your 


AN INHERITANCE 79 

pardon, Mrs. Donner. John Donner is a 
lucky dog ! ” 

But as John Donner stood up and groped 
his way out, he was not so sure of that. 
And it was something very like a hoarse 
sob one might have heard if walking home 
behind him. How could he, who had mar- 
ried and abused this woman so, tell her 
now the truth? He trembled before the 
thought of it. 

He went out on another call presently, 
however. The profession he had chosen 
was compelling him to recognize its power. 
He found himself feeling as deep an interest 
in his cases as if he saw the action of a 
drama with mighty agents on the board. 
It began to make him melt among his kind, 
as if he were to be poured out and spent in 
their service. He had never been quite the 
same since the night Janes broke down, 
when he told him his wife would win 
through, and had cried, and, greatly to his 
embarrassment, kissed both his hands, sur- 
prising him as much as if a side of sole 


8o 


AN INHERITANCE 


leather had suddenly showed human feeling. 
It was directly afterward that he had been 
called to the little girl scalded past help, the 
only child left to her mother, a gay-hearted 
Irish woman, shut into a dark hut in the 
notch of the hills. “ Mother of God ! ” the 
woman was wailing, “ you saw your own 
child suffer, so you did. But he was a man 
grown, more betoken ! Whist now, Biddy, 
darlint, it’s tearing the harrt out of me, ye 
are ! ’ * 

The child’s eyes, pools of darkness and 
pain, turned on him with a look that filled 
his own with tears; and the sight of her 
torment, the clenching of her little hand on 
his, broke up all the fountains of his pity. 

“ Bridget, I would bear it for her if I 
could ! ” he said, with a sudden persuasion 
that he would, and had gently put the little 
child into her last sleep ; and the love that 
could die for another on the cross itself had 
for the first time a personal reality in his 
thought. The reality of it grew stronger 
when he saw Mrs. Morris, in the throes of 


AN INHERITANCE 


Si 


an agony that was taking her into her grave, 
murmuring hymns and verses that had given 
her comfort, leaning on the divine assurance 
as if upon a bed of roses, and herself inspir- 
ing his terrible knife with courage. At the 
beginning he had been used to say that in 
the presence of any such anguish there could 
be no omnipotent power that was not also a 
malignant one ; but now he had a vision of 
the strength given and the heights scaled by 
suffering. 

But while he was gone to his patient, on 
the night when he had heard his wife read 
ing from the “ Happy Warrior ” to Cam- 
perdoun, Nancy came home and saw her 
crab-cactus in its full flush of pendulous 
bloom, and although the early November 
dark had fallen, she threw on her shawl 
again to take the pot, as it had often gone 
before, a little missionary flower, to the 
house of a sick person who had so much 
that all she could give her was the blossom- 
ing of this plant. 

When she came out of the house again, 


82 


AN INHERITANCE 


having done her errand, a bright light 
streaming through the mist from a knoll ap- 
parently not far away attracted her; and 
thinking of forest fires and their dangers, 
she walked on a little way in their direction 
outside the village, without remembering 
that it was the night the boys up there built 
their Guy Fawkes bonfires, according to the 
custom still surviving in a few towns, their 
fathers taking advantage of the frolic to get 
their brush and rubbish burned. 

She was not unhappy as she went ; the 
constant undercurrent of her feeling was that 
she had boundless goodness to be grateful 
for in the growing change in her husband’s 
life and in his different manner toward her. 
She never suffered herself to be misled by 
that ; he was naturally a kind man; but she 
had heard the truth from his own lips. All 
the more she yearned in her affection and in 
spite of herself longed for his love. When- 
ever she had looked at any pretty girl upon 
the way, she had felt as if there were no 
physical pain, no other possible disaster, she 


AN INHERITANCE 


83 


would not be glad to undergo, if she might 
come out as fair as that and have her hus- 
band regard her as the 'minister regarded the 
rosy, beaming thing he had brought home. 

She was not thinking of any of this, 
however, but that she ought to turn back 
now ; when suddenly a score of bonfires 
sprang out of the darkness on the ledges of 
the neighboring hills, shadowy figures run- 
ning before them with a gypsy-like sugges- 
tion. She paused, turning from one to an- 
other, and then, starting to retrace her steps, 
found herself bewildered as to the way, for 
there was neither moon nor star, and the 
November mists gave a sort of weirdness to 
the fires. She went on presently in what she 
supposed the right direction, hesitating at 
last with a strange sense of unacquaintance 
even in the gloom. She was not one, how- 
ever, that often allowed herself to fear, and 
she went on again, sure that she must pres- 
ently come upon some way-mark, and sud- 
denly stopped with one foot in water and 
the other on yielding moss, and found that 


S 4 


AN INHERITANCE 


in some incomprehensible way she had 
taken the wrong turn, and had reached the 
first edge of the great quaking heath, on the 
border of the town, the terror of the mothers 
in the place, but where the more daring 
went for blueberries in the summer-time, 
the heath which was only a bed of moss and 
peat lying on a subterranean lake. She 
stood still then, for it would not do to move 
and plunge into she knew not what, and 
after a minute or two she began to call for 
help, nothing answering her but the echoes 
of her voice beating from hill to hill with 
airy music that had no sound of music to 
her. 

Still, there was not any danger, unless a 
wildcat, or something of the sort, came 
down from the mountains. She stooped and 
groped with her hands for a hummock, found 
one directly beside her that seemed dry and 
firm, and sat down and waited, every now 
and again calling, and experiencing a kind 
of awe of the flapping echoes. She was not 
afraid ; she was usually not at all afraid of 


AN INHERITANCE $5 

death in the abstract. If it had not been 
for feeling that John must not be left, she 
would never, in these years of her marriage, 
have closed her eyes at night without a wish 
that she might not unclose them in the morn- 
ing. But the loneliness and darkness now 
filled her with vague horror, and she left off 
calling and began singing softly to herself 
the hymns she loved best, as if she sur- 
rounded herself with their sacred power, 
and with perhaps some of the same feeling 
as that which once used certain rites and ob- 
servances to keep evil spirits at bay. 

But when Dr. Donner returned, as the 
nine-o’clock bell was ringing, and found his 
wife neither awaiting him, as usual, nor 
coming in presently, he made inquiry of 
Sally, and was concerned to find that she 
was already concerned, as there was no very 
sick person for Mrs. Donner to forget herself 
over, and, moreover, she had said she would 
be back directly. He went once or twice to 
the window, shielding it from the bright 
firelight that, painting upon the outer dark- 


86 


AN INHERITANCE 


ness the scene within, gave him a fleeting 
thought of life itself as something unreally 
painted on the darkness. Tea had been wait- 
ing a long while. He went to the door, and 
looked up and down into the night. He 
remembered how not long since he would 
have laughed at the thought of this anxiety, 
and he hated the man that he had been. 

But after a while he had found it impos- 
sible to wait, and 'he sallied forth again to 
find her and come home with her ; and by 
eleven o’clock he had called at every door 
in the east end of the village, growing more 
and more alarmed with his own alarm, and 
shortly finding himself surrounded by the 
lanterns of fifty people following the high- 
way, separating down this and that lane, 
coming together again, men and women 
alike, calling her name, listening for a hal- 
loo, full of excitement and fear, he him- 
self silent, and as if he had in him the re- 
pressed force of a whirlwind. 

Suddenly Sally darted past him, following 
Brow, the dog, with his nose down. And 


AN INHERITANCE 


87 


the doctor then was after them breathlessly, 
all the lanterns dancing and sparkling be- 
hind him, and in their light, before she 
caught sight of him, he saw Nancy sitting on 
the hummock in the marsh, white and calm, 
as she sang her hymn and stopped quickly 
at Brow’s baying and leaping and caressing. 
In an instant he had sprung across and 
reached her and clasped her in his arms. 
“ Oh, my wife, my darling! ” he was ex- 
claiming. And she looked up in amaze- 
ment, for his tears were streaming over her 
cheek. 

Mrs. Donner had never expected to be so 
happy, in all her life before, she never ex- 
pected then to be so happy again as she was 
that night when, friends and neighbors gone 
after their glad entertainment, her husband, 
kneeling on the rug before her, as she sat by 
the fire, drew her face down and kissed her 
on the mouth — the long, deep, silent kiss of 
perfect love. 

“ I thought I had lost you, Nancy,” he 
half sobbed in pity of himself. “ I never 


88 


AN INHERITANCE 


knew life could be such a desert. Oh, you 
must teach me to be good as you are, half as 
good as you are, and to deserve the mercy I 
have had, my wife, my wife ! ” 

But in his arms out there on the edge of 
the morass, half a flashing thought with her 
had been followed by remembrance that he 
was never to dream she knew he had married 
her as he did. And here in this ecstatic mo- 
ment, while her transfigured face glowed in 
the firelight almost like a thing of beauty, 
unaware of change and development in him- 
self the consciousness possessed him that this 
precious being was never to be so hurt as to 
be allowed to dream that h£r marriage had 
been desecration, that he loved her more 
now than he had always loved her, other 
than in the knowledge that love grows and 
increases as the flower grows from the bud, as 
the flame swells from the well-fanned fire, as 
the world grows from shapeless nebula to star. 

But it was only to John Donner’s eyes 
that beauty blossomed in this pale face. To 
the rest of the small village world there was 


AN INHERITANCE 


39 


no change in Mrs. Donner ; they wanted 
none, indeed. Pure goodness and the light 
of a great happiness made that face fair 
enough for them. 

Life then began again for John Donner. 
He knew that he had been delivered from 
evil. He felt that it was for a purpose. All 
along of late he was aware that he had been 
taking this in hand and taking that to please 
Nancy. Suddenly, whether he had caught 
the habit from life with her, from growing 
sympathy, or whether a miracle had been 
wrought, his endeavor was to please a higher 
power. It was Nancy who had said a doctor 
did God’s work in the world, and here he 
was doing it with an eager, silent joy ; do- 
ing it all the more that his life with Nancy 
seemed a part of it. Sickness and suffering 
and sorrow loomed before him so appallingly 
that he felt as if threescore and ten years 
would be too few for his share of the work. 
Although he still bred and sold his horses, 
the race-course beyond Loon Mountain knew 
him no more. The Break o’ Day house 


9 o 


AN INHERITANCE 


forgot him. He went over to Dawlish’s 
when they sent for him, and helped a man 
there wallowing in abject fear back to life 
again. He was friendly as before ; he had no 
right to be otherwise, he said ; he had been 
one of them — only the Lord had given him 
Nancy. But they all knew the difference 
there; they excused him. “A man ain’t 
any business foolin’ ’ith dead an’ dyin’, and 
’ith us, too,” they said. 

“ It’s the same Johnny,” said one of the 
girls, “only he’s gittin’ his fun out’n the 
other thing.” 

“ I guess a man ain’t seen fer long the 
misery a doctor has, to be as light as Johnny 
Donner uster be,” said an older woman. 
“ That night he took the mortal pain off’n 
my baby I says to myself, says I, ‘ That 
man won’t be settin’ ’em up long at Daw- 
lish’s,’ says I.” 

“Tut, tut, tut, then,” remarked the old 
white-headed crone sucking her pipe in 
the corner. “ Ain’t you got eyes ? Johnny 
Donner has gone on.” 


AN INHERITANCE 


91 


“ He’s hed his part ’ith publishers an’ 
sinners, I guess,” said the woman with 
the baby. “ Granny’s right ; he’s gone 
on.” 

He was driving home one night from 
behind Loon Mountain, where he had done 
some surgical work, while the people there 
were in their turn discussing him. 

“ Don’t see much o’ Johnny Donner 
now,” one said. “They say he’s got re- 
ligion. But he’s got the same twinkle into 
his eye, fer all I see.” 

“ P’r’aps it’s religion,” argued another, 
whittling his tobacco ; “ but w’en I see him 
do that lightning act ’ith his knives an’ ban- 
dages, it.looked the leastestest mite ’sif he’d 
sold his soul to the Old Boy, it did ! ” 

“Wal,” drawled the patient from his 
cot, “ I do’ no’ w’ ether he’s got religion or 
religion’s got him ; but ef you’d ben whar I 
were this time yesterday, you’d ’a’ thought 
’twas the han’s o’ the livin’ Lord a-draggin’ 
of you out o’ hell ; you’d ’a’ wanted them 
to hold on their grip. You’d ’a’ knowed 


92 


AN INHERITANCE 


that man’s made fer suthin’ else than the 
nights at the Break o’ Day. ’ ’ 

Perhaps in less coarse phrase this was 
presently the sentiment of all Woodsedge 
and its dependencies. 

One year followed another, and you 
would have said that Dr. Donner had for- 
gotten there was anything in the world but 
sickness and suffering, except for the joy 
within his own doors — for all around his 
wife in her deep happiness now there was 
the calm of perfect peace. And when little 
John was born, he seemed himself to enter 
a sacrament with God and his wife and his 
son. He had not greatly loved at the time 
the little motherling who lay on the hill- 
side ; he loved him now with a reflex 
love — he was Nancy’s child ; he was the 
brother of little John. He had the figure 
of a small, sculptured angel set up there 
in shining stone, and took Nancy to see it, 
with the new baby in her arms, turning 
the corner of dark cedars to come suddenly 
upon it. 


AN INHERITANCE 


93 


You knew the pulse of Woodsedge pres- 
ently as you met the doctor. There was 
fine weather and but slight ailing when you 
saw him in the chaise with Nancy and the 
baby. There was little or nothing the mat- 
ter with people when you saw him, a year 
or two later, with the boy in the chaise, 
and Brow sitting upright on guard beside 
him. Things were not so very serious with 
the health of the hills when you saw 
him plodding along, with Brow following. 
But when you saw him alone in his gig, his 
head bent down, his face brooding, driving 
the successor of Satan as if his namesake 
were after him, you knew there was work to 
do, and that Dr. Donner was doing it. 

Time and work, watching and waiting 
and weather made his features rugged, and 
powdered hair and beard, but his forehead 
kept its whiteness, his eyes their keen glow. 
There was no house or hearth for twenty 
and more miles around where the dwellers 
had not grown to regard him as they would 
a direct vicegerent of heavenly power. 


94 


AN INHERITANCE 


Here, as the long day broke with its stretch 
of pain, he was sure to come and fill the 
morning with hope. Here, as the dark 
drew on with its awful shadow and dread, 
he brought help to bear it, courage for 
these, and blessed sleep and surcease of pain 
for those. Here, when the need was bitter, 
he had given not only such science and ef- 
fort as he had, but he gave himself, staying 
night and day and night again, lost in the 
fight with pain and grief, with despair and 
death, with dark and terrible destinies. 
The people felt as if there were life-giving, 
health-compelling power in his touch, that 
those eyes of his could penetrate to the root 
of hidden evil ; they had been born into his 
hands, their dead had died in his arms. 
Some of the older ones said there had been 
wild stories of Dr. Donner in his youth ; but 
they seemed to have forgotten what they 
were. The younger ones had the more con- 
fidence in him it may be because of that ; 
they remembered no time when he had not 
been there, possessing all their trust; they 


AN INHERITANCE 


95 


felt as they would had he been a figure up- 
holding the sky — that the sky would fall 
without him. One and all, when he went 
by, said, “There goes a good man,” the 
feeling so fervent that it burned away all but 
the simplest phrase. 

He had prospered, too, as the world goes. 
For, although Dr. Donner had collected but 
little money, what was left of Nancy’s had 
increased in his care; a stretch of forest 
on the north of the hills, that he had al- 
ways owned, had brought him revenues 
which, with a mica mine he opened in con- 
nection with others, had made him rich. 
With the years his boy had grown to man- 
hood, perhaps not brilliant, but on the 
whole satisfactory, stalwart and sturdy, a 
handsome youth, who came home from 
Dartmouth to have a run through Europe. 
Death had not knocked at his door, and he 
had been able to keep Camperdoun in a fair 
measure of content and cheer till the end 
came. The very vagaries of his youth had 
deepened his knowledge and influence and 


9 6 


AN INHERITANCE 


sympathy. Now past his fiftieth year, if 
the serious side of life had subdued some of 
the old gayety of nature, a tenderness had 
grown into the seldom smile ; and the bent 
head, the broad shoulders, made one who 
gazed at him think of Titanic strength and 
intensity of power. 

And while all this was accomplishing, 
and the people had grown in their devotion 
to him, he had grown through his devotion 
to his wife. He remembered well the day 
when driving alone in the deep gloom of 
overhanging woods he had climbed the nar- 
row green way and come out upon a burst 
of light, and as if he had received some 
spiritual revelation, thinking of Nancy he 
had passed to the worship of that which 
Nancy worshipped. It was something that 
never left him. As he went his way in the 
starry nights, the hollows of the midnight 
blue were full of a divine presence ; going 
between the high hill pastures where the 
skies stretched long wastes of lonely light, it 
was with him ; and he felt its companion- 


AN INHERITANCE 


97 


ship in the solitary drives from hill to hill 
in moonless nights, wrestling with wild 
snow-storms and whistling winds. And yet 
perhaps he never had any sweeter and loftier 
moment than when in the meeting-house, 
with the blue sky shining through the bare 
windows on the white walls, and glittering 
on white cloth and silver tankard, in his 
place as deacon, a place his other duties 
seldom allowed him to fill, he passed the 
bread and wine to his wife, and entered 
with her into the presence of God. 

And this was the man, this was the wom- 
an, round about whose happiness Miss Bar- 
bara Camperdoun encamped with all her 
forces. 


IV 


“ If I had had any idea it was like this 
I wouldn’t have made Aunt Barbara’s life 
such a burden to her before we came up 
here,” said Luisa, when she had found her 
breath again after the climbing, still feeling 
as though her lungs were made of red-hot 
brass, and had thrown herself upon the flat 
rock of the summit. 

“Why, what did you think it was like? ” 
said the young man standing beside her and 
looking over the distance. 

“Oh — cows — and stubbly pastures — and 
people who say ‘ heouw.* ” 

“You were not very wrong. There are 
cows and pastures here. And there are 
people who say 1 heouw.’ So there are in 
Virginia, and in Iowa, and in Texas. It 
seems to be one consentaneous point of 
national dialect. But you see there is some- 
98 


AN INHERITANCE 


99 


thing more. My father says that if the view 
of the promised land was as fine as this, the 
prophet ought to have been satisfied with 
that.” 

She glanced up at the young man as he 
stood there at his ease, leaning slightly on 
his long staff, but no more fatigued than if 
he had strolled down a lane, and gazing off 
at the sea of hills below them, a vast welter 
of green and purple melting into the hori- 
zon’s azure, with every here and there out 
of cloud or shower sudden rainbows spring- 
ing, flaming, disappearing. There was 
something in young John Donner’s face 
that held Luisa’s glance, notwithstanding 
the marvel beneath them, as if it were the 
light of a sun she had never seen, a gladness 
of gazing where the very soul shone through 
in beauty. 

“What is it you see?” she cried. “I 
never see anything like that ! ” 

“Why not?” said he, turning a little 
and smiling down at her. “ You have 
eyes. ’ ’ 


IOO 


AN INHERITANCE 


“ But I see not,” said Luisa. “What 
were you thinking of then ? ’ ’ 

“I? Oh, but that doesn’t matter.” 

“ What were you thinking of ? ” 

“Must I say? I was thinking of a 
temptation in a high mountain, and wonder- 
ing if heaven were so beautiful that the 
kingdoms of the earth paled before them ; 
such a kingdom as this scene, for in- 
stance. ’ ’ 

“And what else ? ” as he paused. 

“ Well, I was gathering a hint of the 
Lord’s city out of the golden mists over 
there in the east, and thinking that after all 
they belonged to earth, and I, too, and that 
if earth was to be transfigured into heavenly 

likeness I must do my share ’ ’ 

“ Do you know, if you were in Boston I 
should call you a prig ! You are very re- 
ligious, are you not?” said Luisa, still 
looking up at him gravely. 

“ As you are,” he said. 

“ I religious ? ” cried Luisa. “ Well ! 
I’m the dancingest girl in Boston ! ” 


AN INHERITANCE ioi 

He laughed. “ Perhaps you might be 
that, and religious, too,” he said. 

“ No, indeed ! ” she replied, turning away 
and gathering the broken pebbles about her. 
“ To be religious for me means to go down 
to North Street and the South Cove, you 
know, and over the other side of the hill 
generally. No time for dancing, or for 
anything but picking up sick old women 
and dirty babies.” 

“ That is one way, truly. But there are 
a great many paths to heaven, and travellers 
on the way — those who see the city and 
hearten others as they go ; those who dream 

dreams and have visions Well, perhaps 

you are right,” abandoning himself to the 
confidential moment. “ You can’t be con- 
scious of the great joy and not want to help 
others up to its experience.” 

“Oh, I hate the whole thing!” she 
cried. “ It means death and dying and 
after death. I don’t want to think of it; I 
don’t want to hear about it ! ” 

He looked at her and laughed again. 


102 


AN INHERITANCE 


“You are a brand to be snatched from the 
burning,” he said. “You can’t live long 
in the same town with my mother and feel 
that way.” 

“ But I like here.” 

“So do I.” 

“And this life, this earth, are good 
enough for me. ’ ’ 

“ She will show you how to live on earth, 
and in heaven, too.” 

“ Do you ? ” she exclaimed. 

“I am not as good as my mother. 
Hardly anyone could be, ’ ’ he said, gently. 

“ Your mother ! Oh, what a horrible 
time your wife will have ! ” 

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Al- 
though, to be sure, the lot of a country doc- 
tor’s wife is not cast in velvet ease.” 

“A country doctor ! Are you going to 
persist in that ? I can’t talk you out of it ? ” 

“ Why should you? ” 

“But why?” exclaimed Luisa. “I 
mean — that is — I know it is no affair of 
mine ! ’ ’ 


AN INHERITANCE 


103 

“ I did have other views ” 

“Of course you did. Why, just think 
what you could do at the bar ! And you 
would be in politics ” 

“ Politics ! ” 

“Yes, indeed; you would be senator; 
you would ” 

“ No. I wished to study for the min- 
istry.” 

“ Oh ! ” and she struck a spark of fire 
from two flints in her hand, and then tossed 
them away. 

“And my mother wished it, too,” said 
John, unobservantly. “ But my father 
thought otherwise. He thinks I am adapt- 
ed for his work. And he says it is the Mas- 
ter’s work. And when my mother remem- 
bers what it has done for my father, she says 
she cannot ask more for me, and there you 
have it,” he added, seating himself on an 
edge of the bowlder behind her. “ And so 
I am studying with him for the present. 
But I shall go down to the medical school, 
as I told you, and after that, perhaps again 


104 


AN INHERITANCE 


across the water for Vienna, and to walk the 

Dublin Hospital ” 

“ To come back and practise up here 
among the hills ! But to be sure. What 
am I thinking of?” opening her eyes. 
“ You will be a great city physician. You 
will be the fashion. You will have an in- 
come of forty thousand a year ! 1 ’ 

“ There is quite as much to do here 
among the hills.” 

“ You don’t mean to say you would really 
settle here? To take care of boors and 
bumpkins ? To waste yourself on clods ? ’ * 

* 4 There is no such thing as waste, you 
know — see that rainbow ! And as for that, 
my father is a country doctor. * ’ 

“ I should think it was enough, then, to 
have one such power thrown away. * ’ 

“We don’t look at it so. There are 
bodies and souls of value here. My father 
thought it worth while, when Mr. Morris 
died, to bring here a preacher of as rare 

gifts as there was to be had ’ ’ 

“Yes, I know. Mary told me herself. 


AN INHERITANCE 


10 5 

And he pays him out of his own pocket a 
big salary. She told me not to speak of it. 
But then, of course, you knew.” 

“ No, I didn’t. And, excuse me ” 

“I should have minded Mary, and my 
own business,” said Luisa, laughing. “I 
was never taken up so shortly and so fre- 
quently in my life. There is something in 
the atmosphere of these hills very condu- 
cive to frankness.” 

“ I beg your pardon.” 

“ No, indeed. But you see my excuse is 
that you are all so different here, and you 
interest me.” 

“ Thanks,” said the young man. 

“And now you are offended. But you 
are — like the people in a book. Mary is so 
white and fair and Blessed Damozel seem- 
ing. St. Paul or St. John, or some of 
them, Luke, perhaps, would have looked 
exactly like the doctor. And as for your 
mother — those old Hebrews and Arabs 
didn’t think much of women, did they ! or 
there would have been a seraph of their 


106 AN INHERITANCE 

naming to compare your mother with ! Oh 
— and, of course,” she cried, “I’ve made 
another blunder now ! You call it playing 
with sacred things.” 

“ If you say nothing worse than that,” 
said he, “I fancy you will be forgiven.” 
And the smile that played round his lips 
and kindled the rather severe outlines, as he 
looked down at her, who gazed up at him 
with the light sparkling in her gypsy-like 
eyes, and the color glowing in her velvet 
cheek, was all that was needed to send the 
dimples dancing over Luisa’s face again. 

“ Well,” she said, “ when I see you gal- 
loping by as if you had a lariat coiled on 
the saddle-bow, I must say you don’t look 
as if the future of a country parson or a 
country doctor was the one you had chosen 
for yourself ! ’ ’ 

“ I really don’t know why either of those 
people should not ride a good horse. ’ ’ 

“ All the same, I believe I shall go into 
Tucson, or another such spot, some day yet, 
and see you with a cowboy’s hat and car- 


AN INHERITANCE 


107 

tridge-belt, speaking with your gun for all 
it’s worth.” 

“ May your prophetic powers increase.” 

‘ ‘ I suppose you mean to say they never 
can be less. Well, Mary ought to be tired 
holding the horses,” she said. “And I’m 
sure I’m tired. Hills are all very well to 
look at. But I never could live on scenery. 
I want people, too, and all the touch and 
go of life. I can’t have the go without the 
touch. And yet, who knows ? ’ ’ she said. 
“ I think if I lived long among such people 
as you are here, I might be — in time — just 
a fraction as good. What they call not half 
bad, you know.” And she lifted her hand 
for him to help her up and forfend her in 
the scramble down to the hollow, where 
Mary had waited with the horses. 

‘ ‘ Oh, I rode all one fall with the Myo- 
pias,” said Luisa, as they mounted and 
went on, “ but it was nothing like this ! I 
feel every instant as if I were going to slip 
over the edge of the earth. Mary, what 
possesses you to sit up in your saddle that 


io8 


AN INHERITANCE 


way? You ride like one of the Wild 
Ladies ! ” And John had to dismount and 
give Mary his bridle-rein, and lead Luisa’s 
horse himself, to the accompaniment of 
shrieks and laughter and blushes and great 
gayety. And it was early dusk when they 
reached the village and found Miss Barbara 
at the Camperdoun gate with old Martha, 
just properly disquieted and no more. 

“Oh, no,” said Miss Barbara, with sus- 
picious sweetness, “ I felt you must be per- 
fectly safe with Mr. John. He knows every 
cleft of the hills, Martha says. Thanks ! 
Thanks!” to the young man. “Good- 
night! Good -night ! ” and she turned with 
her charge. 

“Well, I hope, Luisa,” she added, after 
the door was closed, “ you are not going to 
treat this one as you have treated all the 
young men at home — let him get interested 
in you and then drop him ” 

“Into nether blackness,” said the girl. 
“Aunt Barbara, I should think you consid- 
ered me a perfectly hopeless flirt. * * 


AN INHERITANCE 


109 


1 ‘ 1 do, * ’ said Miss Barbara. 

They went in and sat in the old parlor, 
just where the light of the hall lamp fell on 
the portrait of the girl that Luisa used to 
say would drive her wild if she met her in 
the dark. 

“If these people weren’t crazy,” she 
said, expecting some expostulation, and 
thinking to ward it off, “ they got them- 
selves up for the part. They’ll drive me 
crazy some dark night yet. Aunt Barbara, 
we must put some netting over them, and 
have it thick ” 

“ When I came up here,” said Miss Bar- 
bara, paying no attention to the new issue, 
“ it was to arrange a matter of property. 
And I brought you along to be rid of love- 
making, not to plunge into more. And as 
for this young man, Luisa, he is the only 
child of his father and mother, and I can’t 
have you playing with him.” 

“I am not playing with him,” said 
Luisa. 

“I don’t dispute that he is, all things 


no 


AN INHERITANCE 


considered, eligible. Yes, eligible, and pre- 
sentable — an only son, idolized. Dr. Don- 
ner, I understand, is a very wealthy man 
now, and with a large income besides from 
mica mines and wood-lots and what not. 
And money grows — there’s no doubt of 
that. And if you are in earnest about 
young John Donner,” said Miss Barbara 
slowly, “ and if he chooses to come down 
and settle in town, we could soon fetch him 
a practice. He has seen the world ; is col- 
lege-bred ; is serious — it would give you 
stability; yes, indeed, I think well of it.” 

“Aunt Barbara!” shrieked Luisa, from 
the lounge, “what in the world are you 
talking about ? You are all out. You are 
just as much mistaken as if you had torn 
your gown. My goodness ! what do I want 
of him? He is dead in love with Mary.” 

“So was Romeo with Rosaline. It was 
before he had seen you. ‘ When I said I 
would die a bachelor I did not think I 
should live till I were married,’ said Bene- 
dick. He isn’t dead in love with Mary 


AN INHERITANCE 


hi 


now.” And at that Luisa caught up her 
hat in a fine temper and rushed to her room 
and locked the door, and flung herself on 
her bed in a passion of tears. 

“ Oh ! ” she sobbed, “ I don’t care a 
scrap ! And I know he doesn’t care a scrap. 
He is in love with Mary ; he ought to be, 
I want him to be ! Oh, to think I’ve only 
been here six weeks, and am in all this 
trouble ! Oh, what was I born for ? I will 
go home ; I will go right home ; the house 
is there whether the family is or not. 
And oh, I don’t know ! I don’t know — 
how I — can — go away ! ’ ’ And then she 
pulled the other pillow over her head in a 
whirl of pride and shame — the handsome, 
haughty Luisa, who had been so long in the 
habit of breaking hearts with her black eyes 
and her damask cheeks and her bewildering 
smiles and her silver voice, that she never 
knew she had a heart of her own to break ! 

And while Luisa was crying in her pillow, 
and rising and walking the floor, and bath- 
ing her eyes, and beginning to cry again, 


I 12 


AN INHERITANCE 


Mary leaned over the gate with John and 
watched the moon float up full over the 
crest of Benbow, and John watched its sil- 
ver glorying of her face and her fair hair 
and her great night -blue eyes. 

“Iam so sorry,” she was saying, “ that 
I was born anywhere but here. I love it 
all so. I should like to feel I was its very 
own. ’ * 

“You would not advise me, then, to go 
down and open my practice in the city?” 
he asked after a moment. 

“I? Oh, John, never! To be sure,” 
she added, with rather a regretful intona- 
tion, “ you might become more famous 
there ; have more opportunity ” 

“There is all the opportunity in the 
world here,” he said, quickly. “And I 
must be with my father.” 

She turned in a little surprise, as if she 
saw he had been weighing a point about 
which there was no question. The minister, 
who had no more wisdom, despite his gifts, 
than to step down just then and join them, 


AN INHERITANCE 


113 


thought he had never seen anything so 
beautiful as his daughter standing there in 
the moonlight like a statue that has just 
melted into a woman. Perhaps John 
thought so, too. But as he gazed, a thin 
cloud drifted across the moon, and in the 
place of that innocent white still beauty 
swam a little dark face, all blush and smile 
and sparkle, glancing, laughing, flashing, 
living, and dazzled and dimmed his eyes. 

But old Martha was, on the whole, some- 
thing wiser than the minister. She had 
seen John dashing off the next morning, in 
his saddle, for a long ride up and down hill. 
“ Ye needn’t go horseback riding,” she 
muttered to herself, although apparently 
addressing him as he galloped by, “ to work 
it off. It’s only time cools hot blood— an’ 
ye come rightly by it ! But ye’re yer 
mother’s son, ez well ez his’n, an’ ye’ve got 
the stuff in ye ter overcome ten’tation. 
Ye’ve got princerple, John Donner ! An’ 
ef this little minx o’ ourn ain’t tew much fer 
ye, ye’ll clap it right on now ! ” 


AN INHERITANCE 


114 

Apparently John had no sympathetic way 
of taking the unheard advice to heart, for he 
came up the yard the evening of that day, 
scattering with his stick the petals of the 
poppies by the path. 

But before he could drop the knocker, 
Martha, who had been on the watch, came 
out and closed the door behind her. 

“ She’s ben to bed all day ’ith the head- 
ache, an’ you can’t see her,” she said. “ An’ 
ez for you, John Donner, you jes’ put me in 
min’ of a fly ’t can’t keep away frum the 
honey, pizon in it or not ! I’ve hearn tell 
of men ’t was in love ’ith two women ter 
oncet, but I didn’ expec’ ter see ’em in a 
Christian lan’. Now, you better go home 
tell ye know yer own mind. What ! Oh, 
ye ain’t no need to look glowering to me ! 
I ain’t a gal, an’ I don’t mind yer looks the 
leastestest mite. Ye’d be ez harnsome as 
the Archangel Gabriel— as ye be — an’ I 
shouldn’t see it, an’ ye can stan’ up as big 
an’ forbiddin* as Mount Pisgeh, an’ I 
shouldn’t be afraid of ye. I should only see 


AN INHERITANCE 


IX 5 

the little boy thet uster run acrosst the green 
ter old Marthy fer her hot gingerbread. 
Wal’, I’m takin’ better care o’ my hot 

gingerbread now ” 

“What in the world are you talking 
about, Aunt Martha?” said the young 
man, impatiently, looking up at the house. 

But Martha took a step nearer, and laid 
her old seamy hand on his arm. “ Now, 
John,” said she. “ I give ye the fust kiss ye 
ever hed — yes, I did ! I was yer mother’s 
nuss. Mr. Camperdoun, he lent me — an’ 
I’d ’a’ gone ef he hedn’t. An’ I’ve ben 
fond o’ ye sence ye were so high. An’ I’ve 
watched out on ye, an’ prayed for ye, an’ 
ben proud of ye. ’ ’ 

“Yes, Aunt Martha, I know it,” said the 
young man. “ And I recognize and return 
all your friendship. I don’t know just what 
you are driving at now. ’ ’ 

“Yes, ye do. I ain’t ben all the same’s 
own folks to ye all yer life fer nothin’, an’ 
ye know me well enough ter know w’at I 
mean. ’Cause I’m fond o’ you ain’t the 


1 1 6 . 


AN INHERITANCE 


reason I’m willin’ ter see ye go straight ter 
destruction.” 

“ Well, look here,” said the young man, 
laughing now, “ if this is all you have to 
say ” 

“ ’Tisn’t. An’ you needn’t laugh. On- 
less you want ter laugh t’other side yer 
mouth. ’Tain’t no laughin’ matter. Fond 
ez I be of you, John Donner, I’ve ben jes’ 
ez fond o’ Mary Swann, ever sence she 
lighted in this town like a little white bird. 
It seemed ez ef she was too good ter stay, 
an’ I vum I do’ no’ but she be ! She’s a 
sight too good fer ye, anyway, playin’ fast 
an’ loose ez ye be. Now, maybe,” said 
Martha, with half a wheedling emphasis 
“ you ain’t jes’ so’s ter say engaged to 
Mary, but ye know ye ain’t eyther of ye 
expected ter marry anybody else. Ye know 
she’s cut out for ye, an’ there ain’t nobody 
else in this breathin’ world that’s fit ter 
be yer blessed mother’s darter, an’ ’twould 
nigh about break her heart to hev Mary’s 
heart broke.” 


AN INHERITANCE 117 

“ Come, come, Aunt Martha,” said the 
young man, “ you will have to let me pass.” 

“ W’en I’m ready. I ain’t said my say 
yet. I’m yer mother’s an’ yer father’s 
friend. I knowed ’em afore ye did. An’ 
that’s one side of it. The other is,” and 
Martha’s little pale eyes flashed at him, 
“ I’ve been hired help in the Camperdoun 
fambly this thirty year come nex’ month. 
Their fortins hes ben mine. I’ve ben true 
to ’em, an’ I mean ter be. Where the 
Camperdouns is consarned, I’m a Camper- 
doun,” and there Martha choked a little, 
but not at all with any fear of the disdain 
of the landed gentry among whom she had 
taken her place, and reached up and pulled 
the comb out of her hair and gave the gray 
wisp a stronger twist, as if the tension 
tightened her control over her feelings. 
“An’ so ye see,” she began again, after 
thrusting in the comb more firmly, “ I can’t 
hev no playin’ ’ith this here little minx. 
She may be a poppet,” said Martha, “ but 
she’s a Camperdoun. An’ she’s a dear, 


AN INHERITANCE 


1 18 

pooty, coaxin’ little cat, an’ I’m fond o’ 
her, tew. An’ that’s all they is about it. 
An’ I tell ye, ef ye don’t let her alone, John 
Donner, I’ll go to yer father. An’ then we’ll 
see. Hev ye forgot,” she exclaimed, her 
voice rising, “ that she’s got w’at yer father 
calls the Camperdoun inheritance, jes’ ez 
much ez the worst of ’em ? Don’t ye know 
this girl’s got the thing in her blood, jest 
ez strong ez Launce Camperdoun hed, ef 
there’s anythin’ wakes the sleepin’ beast? 
Ef that there Miss Barb’ry’s name warn’t 
Camperdoun I wouldn’t hev one mite o* 
respec’ for her,” cried the old woman, with 
fervid inconsequence. “ Fer ef I know 
black an’ w’ite w’en I see it, it was her give 
him his death notice w’en she sent him 
word they was cousins, and ’t warn’t no use 
doublin’ crazy blood, or words to that ef- 
fec’. I come an’ nussed him through brain- 
fever, an’ arter that he jes’ wilted down. I 
s’ pose she done right, though. In the end, 
that is. But she’d or ter thought o’ thet in 
the uptake. An’ ye see that ye do right, 


AN INHERITANCE 


119 

John Donner ! I won’t hev this Loizy o’ 
ourn tampered with. Let sleepin’ dogs lie. 
She’ll do well enough ef thar don’t nothin’ 
pertic’lar come acrost her hawse, ez they say. 
But she sha’n’t be upset by a feller thinkin’ 
he’s in love with her w’en he knows in his 
soul he’s agoin’ ter marry another gal.” 

A blind slammed open on the second 
floor, a head where the sunset glinted in 
points of light on every dark ring of hair 
was thrust through the open window, a 
laughing face looked down at him. “ I’ve 
had a headache,” said Luisa. “ I’m all 
right now. Stay a moment. I’ll be down 
directly.” 

Mary waited, leaning on the garden-gate 
alone that night, and went in when the nine- 
o’clock bell rung, with a sort of chill at her 
heart that she had never felt before. She 
didn’t know why it was that, as she copied 
out her father’s sermon for him the next 
day, she listened for a sound the morning 
long with a painful eagerness ; the sound of 
a familiar foot on the gravel that did not 


120 


AN INHERITANCE 


come ; and that when she put the little chil- 
dren to bed for her mother, and sat singing 
to them in the twilight, the beating of her 
heart made her voice tremble so that the 
boy reached from his bed and put an arm 
about her neck and whispered, ‘ ‘ Buvver 
loves Mawy.” 

Buvver was ill next day, and when Luisa 
ran down for Mary to join them on a tramp 
up the Weathergauge, Buvver would not 
hear of Mary’s leaving him ; and, of course, 
Mary would not cross the sick child’s whim, 
and she stayed at home, but with the heart 
going out of her and up the mountain-side 
where the party scrambled. She contented 
herself as she could by thinking of the high 
pasture where she and John had sat while 
the sun revealed the mysteries in the front 
of old Blue opposite, the long descending 
slope between peopled with the wild horses 
of the doctor’s upper farm, and Blue Moun- 
tain rising with layers and lines of pine 
forest, into which presently wound veils of 
smoke, while the forest as it climbed became 


AN INHERITANCE 


I 2 I 


deep violet glooms suddenly smitten and 
parted by rifts of sunshine, disclosing, still 
above, bare, scarred precipice and leaping 
torrent and misty caverns ; and the heights 
beyond, swathed in deep, impenetrable 
azure, seemed, she had said to John, to be 
both the throne and the high altar of Power. 
She wondered if John would not remember 
her there. And as she sat beside the bed 
where Buvver was now asleep she was 
ashamed of herself that her breath went and 
came so eagerly ; that she found it so hard 
to sit still ; that the unreasonable tears 
would start and drop upon her work. 

Perhaps John would have remembered 
her there, if he had gone there — for the un- 
spoken words that had trembled on his lips 
as they had rested there were like those 
strains that “pipe to the spirit ditties of no 
tone,” and they had both known what the 
presence of others hindered from further 
expression. But to-day the party wound 
round the Weathergauge by another path ; 
and after luncheon he had been sitting with 


122 


AN INHERITANCE 


Luisa, a little apart from the rest, looking 
at quite a different view — the view of a 
rosy face where dimple chased dimple, 
where white eyelids drooped their dark 
lashes over dark eyes and lifted them with 
flashes of laughing light, and little teeth 
glittered, and the corners of a pretty mouth 
curved bewilderingly ; the face of a woman 
like those he had read of, a woman of the 
great outer world with its dash and life and 
sparkle, such as he had seen but not ap- 
proached in Paris perhaps ; a woman fit for 
the life of courts, and smiling now on him. 
And they had risen and strolled away, fol- 
lowing a track John knew, now under 
arches of green boughs where he had to 
clear the tangle; now pausing to look at 
the world through open spaces while they 
discussed their young experiences and opin- 
ions ; now resting before starting to go 
down and find the others ; and at last 
wrapped in a cloud that came up about 
them and played its lightnings to and fro 
under their feet. 


AN INHERITANCE 


123 


“ I think we will climb a little higher 
and get out of these mists,” said John. 
“ And if we keep to the left there’s a path 
down. I have heard my mother say that 
when it is dark where we are it is best to 
climb higher and into the light.” 

‘ ‘ That is one of the good things,” said 
Luisa, with a little sigh. “ It isn’t my way. 
I should just shut my eyes and fight on.” 

“ There isn’t much fighting here,” said 
John. 

4 ‘No; only marching and countermarch- 
ing. And I have my marching orders. I 
shall be going home so soon now,” she 
said, with another little sigh. 

“Going home!” And he stood still 
with sudden consternation. 

“ Yes. They are all settled on the Shore 
by this.” 

“ I thought — -I hoped ” 

“ Oh, Aunt Barbara is going to stay,” 
said Luisa, demurely. 

“ What in the name of wonder ” 

“ Do you care whether Aunt Barbara 


124 


AN INHERITANCE 


stays or not, I suppose you want to say. 
Well, she will have the place ready for the 
family by another season.” 

“ Another season. It might as well be 
another life.” 

“Exactly,” said Luisa. And then she 
stopped and looked behind her. “ I 
thought the others would be somewhere 
here,” she said. “ Oughtn’t we to go back? 
Sha’n’t we lose them? ” 

“ What do we want of the others? ” he 
asked, roughly. 

She shrugged her shoulders. 

“You said there were no bears in these 
woods,” she said, with a side glance. 

He laughed then. “You make no al- 
lowances,” he began. 

“What nonsense 1 ” interrupted Miss 
Luisa. 

“To be sure, it is impossible for you to 
see, to know — I don’t imagine a rose blow- 
ing all alone would have any idea of what 
the world would be without it.” 

“I’m sure I don’t know how roses feel. 


AN INHERITANCE 


«5 


I hardly think science has gone so far. 
Though I always did believe flowers felt it 
when you picked them. But just now,” 
she exclaimed, coming to a halt, “have 
you really any idea where we are? It 
doesn’t seem to me that this is even a 
bridle-path. Chaperones do have their 
uses, don’t they? If there were such things 
at Woodsedge, we — could have lost our- 
selves on Weathergauge just the same.” 

John started and looked about him. 

“I thought I knew every twig on the 
Weathergauge,” he replied. “ We— we 
really must wait where we are till the sky 
lifts.” And he began to break off some 
hemlock boughs for her to sit upon. 

As she waited, watching his movements, 
something of her thought concerning his 
splendid young stature and strength shot so 
swiftly into her face that he cast down his 
eyes. 

“Yes,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “the 
first man might have been breaking boughs 
for the first woman, as I am doing ” 


126 


AN INHERITANCE 


“But she wouldn’t have worn a bicycle 
suit from Ballard’s,” said Luisa. “Why 
are you cutting so many boughs? ” 

“It may come up cold,” looking away 
after a quick glance. “ I may have to 
cover you, while I go up on the ledge and 
build a fire to tell them where we are.” 

“You don’t mean to say — how roman- 
tic ! How Penny Gower would enjoy this ! 
Are we really lost ? ’ ’ 

“ Not exactly,” he said, piling the plumy 
boughs. “There,” he continued, seating 
her on the soft, fragrant heap, and throwing 
himself down beside her. “When the sun 
sets I think it will open the clouds below, 
and we shall see our way. There is nothing 
to be afraid of. I have an idea,” he said, 
“ that we have wound round the mountain, 
and that the shaking heath is some hundreds 
of feet below us. That shaking heath is 
like a piece of the Debatable Land. The 
common people used to declare it was pos- 
sessed by spirits, for it is ubiquitous ; a 
piece of it comes almost into town, and it 


AN INHERITANCE 


127 


encircles the base of Weathergauge ten 
miles away, except for the causeway by 
which we crossed. I suppose Weather- 
gauge was some old volcano, rising from 
the lake once. ’ ’ 

“ Adam and Eve and the beginning of 
the world,” said Luisa. “Quite genea- 
logical. ’ ’ 

It grew dusky, and the wind, sweeping by, 
freshened. 

“Do you know,” she said at last, look- 
ing up gravely, “if we only were lost, and 
were never to be found, and it were the 
real end of all things here for us * ’ 

She stopped, her voice trembling. He 
took her hand and kept it ; it fluttered a 
moment like a bird, and then lay still in 
his. She was so near that her breath 
fanned warm on his cheek. 

“There is no such fortune,” he said, 
“good or bad. And I — had rather live 
with you, than die with you!” And the 
next moment his arms were about her and 
he had kissed her on the mouth. 


128 


AN INHERITANCE 


They neither of them spoke for a long 
while. The moment was enough ; alone, 
above the world, in each other’s arms ! 
They had no idea if it were a moment or 
an hour that they lingered, with murmurs, 
with caresses, with simple silence of rapture. 
There is nothing by which to measure time 
in Paradise. And then it began to grow 
light about them, and out of a great golden 
glamour the friendly face of the moon 
looked through. 

“Oh! ” cried Luisa, “that is the end. 
There is the light and the world and life 
again ! ” 

“ This is life,” said John. “And there 
is the heath, as I thought. Now our way is 
clear and safe. My mother told me the 
happiest night of her life was on the edge of 
that heath, where once she was lost and had 
abandoned herself to the love and care of 
heaven, and my father came and found her 
and snatched her back to the love here. 
And here, just above, Luisa, has been and 
is the happiest night of my life, too.” 


AN INHERITANCE 


129 

And for answer, Luisa burst into tears, 
sobbing vehemently, uncontrollably. 

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” cried 
John. 

“Nothing, nothing!” she sobbed. 
“ Only I have been so happy, and life is so 
short, and things — things are so cruel. Oh, 
how could Paolo and Francesca have been 
in hell when they were together ! ’ ’ And 
he held her, and she clung to him, till the 
tears stopped, and hand in hand, with 
whispered . words of endearment, as if they 
feared the very trees should hear, they took 
their way down. 

It was that forenoon that Mrs. Donner 
had come across the green to Mary. 

“ Buvver is better,” she said. “Noth- 
ing really ailed him, the doctor says. He 
does not need you, indeed, dear soul, and I 
do. Your mother is willing, Maida is pack- 
ing your trunk, and we are going on a little 
journey together, you and I. The doctor 
thinks the salt air will be good for both of 
us. And he can’t go; and I can’t go 


AN INHERITANCE 


130 

alone, and you haven’t seen the sea for 
years, Mary. John will come and bring us 
home, I hope. And there isn’t a half hour 
to spare. ’ ’ 

An hour before that the doctor had said 
to his wife, as he saw the young people go- 
ing by the gate with their baskets, and tak- 
ing the Weathergauge lane, “ I suppose 
you haven’t noticed Master John’s fancy for 
the little Camperdoun puss ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, I have,” she said, somewhat de- 
jectedly. “ I am afraid I have. And I had 
so wished for something else, you know.” 

“ You will have something else,” he said, 
smiling at her, as she sat folding and un- 
folding the white Liberty scarf round her 
shoulders. “ It is only a fancy, an infatua- 
tion, if I know the signs. It will pass pres- 
ently, like any phase of the moon. Yes, I 
have seen and heard too much of the Cam- 
perdoun taint to have my son’s life ruined 
by it. While he is waiting for my consent 
he will outgrow it. This part of him is my 
son,” he said, still looking at her and won- 


AN INHERITANCE 


dering, without knowing that he did so, 
what further loveliness heaven could add 
to her. “ But if history repeats itself it is 
on the upward spiral here. And I haven’t 
any fear for your son, my wife. He will 
come out all right.” 

“It troubles me to think,” she said, 
“ that he will make me his confidante when 
he is ready. And it will be the first time 
he has not had my sympathy.” 

“Then he shall not make you his confi- 
dante. It will be best for him not to do so. 
To confide a thing is to cement it, in a way. 
You shall go off somewhere. I suppose I 
can live while you are gone. To come 
home at night and not find you — it is a 
sacrifice. Nancy, I never dreamed youth 
would last so long. What is the rhyme the 
children were saying, 4 Monday’s child is 
fair in the face, Tuesday’s child is full of 
grace,’ — you must have been born between 
the two, for you are as fair to me to- 
day ’ ' 

“ There, there, ” she said, smiling, and 


132 


AN INHERITANCE 


taking his knotty hand and passing it 
across her lips. “I was never fair, you 
know.” 

“The years have moulded your soul into 
your face ! ” he said. “Yes, I know how 
it will be ; the moment you are gone I shall 
begin to quake lest it is a delusion that you 
care for your old man still.” 

“One would think it was a superior be- 
ing. I am only your old wife.” 

“ There is no wife so beautiful as an old 
wife.” 

“ I hope John will think so when his time 
comes,” as she laid her cheek upon the hand 
she still held. 

“ Ah ! John, yes — well,” he paused a mo- 
ment. “ What do you say to the Shoals? ” 
he asked then. 

“ It seems like running away in the face 
of danger. ’ ’ 

“ It is best for John. I might be able to 
run down by and by. And I think a little 
toning up with the open sea will do you no 
harm.” 


AN INHERITANCE 


133 


“I will take Mary with me,” said Mrs. 
Donner. 

And so it happened, as John wound down 
the mountains, threading the narrow green- 
wood ways, lifting the rain - drenched 
branches, scaring the wild bird from her 
nest, climbing round bowlders, and coming 
out of the shadow down the long wet past- 
ures into the glory of the moonlight, his feet 
upon the earth, his head in a cloud of joy, 
that his mother and Mary were speeding 
away in a sleeping-car, with the iron echoes 
beating round them as they clanged along, 
like an everlasting resonance of bolts and 
chains shot home and barring them out of 
happiness. 

But when there is a disturbance in the at- 
mosphere for one or two people, there is apt 
to be at the same time a disturbance for 
several. As Miss Barbara Camperdoun at 
her door was surveying the clouds, just be- 
fore the thunder-storm burst over the valley, 
she hardly saw the carriage taking Mrs. 
Donner to the station, for at the same mo- 


134 


AN INHERITANCE 


ment she saw a figure strangely familiar 
coming along the dusty road — yellow um- 
brella and camp-stool and other fine artistic 
belongings under his arm, and a generally 
weary air about him, as he also looked at 
the clouds, not to be mistaken. 

“My gracious !” she exclaimed, as she 
went in quickly and shut the door. “ Was 
there ever anything more unfortunate? 
There isn’t a moment to lose. I shall speak 
to Dr. Donner at once, and tell him what I 
propose to do for Luisa, if she marries to 
please me. And I really think she might 
go further and fare worse. He can’t do less 
for John. He will do more. Yes, I think 
the house will be on the Avenue. But the 
nail must be clinched now, for Luisa’s as 
changeable as the day. What in the name 
of goodness sent Penny Gower to Wood- 
sedge now ? ’ ’ 


V 


The thunder-storm that had swept through 
the valley while the party of young people 
rested on the ledges of Weathergauge had left 
the air next morning more light and nimble 
than that round Macbeth' s castle, and Miss 
Barbara Camperdoun had recovered from 
the fright into which thunder always cast 
her, sufficiently to remember the look on 
Luisa’s face as John had parted from her at 
the gate, and she had darted past her aunt 
and old Martha and up to her own room, 
something disordered, something flushed — 
Miss Barbara could not tell if that look were 
one of purpose, of joy, or of agony. 

“ It is all settled ! ” said Miss Barbara to 
herself. “ And, of course, it has excited 
her. She is such a little free and inde- 
pendent spirit, she does not take kindly to 
the idea of being mastered, and it is plain 
that love has mastered her at last. Well, 
*35 


136 


AN INHERITANCE 


I’m glad things have declared themselves 
before Penny Gower, with his ridiculous at- 
tractions, came upon the scene to make a 
diversion. And as I said this noon, the 
very first thing I’ll do to-morrow is to see 
Dr. Donner and have the thing made irrev- 
ocable. With what the doctor is able to 
allow, and I am convinced that is something 
extraordinarily handsome, and with what I 
can do,” said Miss Barbara, counting off 
imaginary sums on her fingers, “ few young 
people have a better start in life than they 
will have. Yes, it is decidedly the best 
chance Luisa has had, or is likely to have. 
I’m sure I don’t know who there is — and I 
want her settled ! We will get him a Back 
Bay practice, with the kind of people that 
go out of town from May to October, so 
that they can come up here for four months 
in the year at least. And the more I see of 
this ideal village and this ancestral place of 
ours, the more fit I think it all is ! And, 
for my part, I shall have a load off my mind 
when Luisa is married and tied down to some 


AN INHERITANCE 


137 

duties, for I never know what in the world 
the little brimstone is going to do next ! It 
certainly is a misfortune to be an only daugh- 
ter and a beauty, and have a spirit and a 
will, and lovers, and all that. Dear, dear 
me, it is nearly midnight now ! I wonder 
if they have such storms here frequently — 
thunder does always string me up so ! ” 

So it was early in the morning when a 
note, written in Miss Barbara’s most mannish 
hand, but sealed with her most ladylike wax, 
and asking his presence for a brief interview, 
was put into Dr. Donner’s hand. 

The doctor was breakfasting by himself, 
and feeling exceedingly lonesome. He 
missed the face opposite him for so many 
mornings of so many years — for even when 
his wife had been up all night with the sick 
she had always made shift to pour his coffee ; 
and he felt as if there were something gone 
wrong in the relation of things without it — 
the face that might be old and plain, but in 
which the sweetness of the spirit, as he had 
told her, had wrought a loveliness that to 


13 ^ 


AN INHERITANCE 


him was more than beauty, and that of late 
years it had never crossed his mind to doubt 
was beautiful to all the world besides. He 
was thinking of her as he slowly sipped his 
coffee. A bitterness of sudden remem- 
brance of those early days, and what now 
seemed to him her divine patience in endur- 
ing them, made even his cup taste bitter. 
He thanked heaven, as he bent his head in 
the silent grace, that she had never known 
his baseness in marrying her as he did. He 
felt as he thought of it afterward while fill- 
ing his phials that he could not have borne 
her righteous contempt. He felt, too, that 
he could even less well have borne the sting 
of anguish it would have been to her. He 
thanked heaven for another thing — as in his 
practice he had noticed that the son, al- 
though he might have the father’s physical 
resemblance, was almost invariably the 
moral and mental and spiritual child of his 
mother — that John was his mother’s son ; 
and as he thought of it, John seemed to him 
to have an immense advantage, a tremen- 


AN INHERITANCE 


*39 


dous spring-board for his work in the fact 
that he was his mother’s son. It was al- 
ready a consecration for the Master’s work. 
“And there is need of him,” thought the 
doctor. “ Here, it may be, too. For 
where there was one Break o’ Day with all 
its miseries, one Dawlish’s when I was a 
lad, there are five now — farther off, to be 
sure,” for neither of those places existed 
now in Woodsedge, “ but still within reach, 
and fermenting evil, needing the strength of 
his mighty young frame and the purity of 
his principle.” And then it flashed over 
him, not for the first time, the conviction of 
the boy’s feeling if he knew of the early life 
of his father. And he groaned in spirit. 
“ Well, well,” he said. “ We are forgiven 
a sin when we have reached a point where 
we could by no possibility commit it again. 
And if I have the Lord’s forgiveness, I 
think I must rely on the boy’s. And in all 
probability he will never have a dream of it. 
For who would have the temerity to speak 
of it to him ? — there is not a creature in the 


140 


AN INHERITANCE 


world so cruel, so ignoble. Come, come, 
this is a poor beginning of a day’s work ! 
And the young fellow on his horse half-way 
up Weathergauge already — I wish he hadn’t 
to have this pain that I fear may be coming 
— but it would be worse pain by and by. 
Somehow the best we have comes through 
pain. His mother will make it all right, 
though.” As he went out, he saw lying 
on the table in the hall the white Liberty 
scarf that his wife had worn the day before ; 
he took it up and kissed it ; it had lain in 
one of her old sandal-wood boxes, and car- 
ried the delicate scent, sweet and evanes- 
cent, that was always about her garments, 
and he put it in his breast-pocket before 
reading the note from Miss Barbara that 
Sally handed him. 

It was but a short distance across the 
green to the Camperdoun house under its 
great oak-trees. Not waiting for his gig, 
the doctor strolled over, his hands in his 
pockets, except when he took them out to 
put them on the curly heads of two children 


AN INHERITANCE 


141 

running along on either side of him a little 
way, Brow, the grandson of old Brow, fol- 
lowing at his heels in the hope of a frolic 
with Bursar, and he paused at the Camper- 
doun gate for a draught of the fresh, dewy 
fragrance that blew down from the mountain- 
side and curled about the valley, and seemed 
to fill it with strength and courage, and all 
the deliciousness of life besides. The doc- 
tor had need of that long draught of brac- 
ing air and vigor before he turned and went 
up the path to meet Miss Barbara at the 
door. 

She took him into the west parlor, a cool 
and shadowy place in the morning, with its 
heavy damask curtains, whose moss-green 
hues had long since faded to a silver-olive 
sheen, and among whose old spider-legged 
mahogany and dark imprisoning portraits 
Launce Camperdoun had been wont to 
spend his sunsets and long evenings. It 
was all the same as it had been, except for 
the great jars of fresh flowers that stood 
about here and there. But it gave Dr. 


142 


AN INHERITANCE 


Donner a more than passing mood of sad- 
ness to recall the life that had been lived 
and had gone out here in its mild mad- 
ness ; and as he stood looking at the pict- 
ure of Camperdoun in his youth, in the 
niche over the fireplace, he found tears in 
his eyes. 

Luisa had not yet come down ; the little 
maid who helped Martha had been told to 
bring her toast and tea to her room some 
time ago. So Miss Barbara felt herself at 
perfect liberty. Not that she anticipated 
any difficulty — of course she was doing the 
Donners an honor which they would rec- 
ognize and acknowledge; but still she pre- 
ferred to have the doctor by himself. 

“Pray be seated, doctor,” she said. 
And she could not have told you why she 
felt a slight sensation of awe, as if in the 
presence of majesty, when this man, who 
used to break her uncle’s horses, took the 
great arm-chair near her own and laid his 
arm along the ebony table there. 

“ I hope you are not very much occupied 


AN INHERITANCE 


1 43 


this morning,” she said, blandly; ‘'for I 
want your counsel and agreement concern- 
ing our young people.” 

“Our young people?” inquired Dr. 
Donner. 

“ Yes — Luisa and your son. They are — 
as, to be sure, you are aware— very much 
— interested, I may say, in each other,” 
said Miss Barbara, hesitating a little at the 
calm unsuspiciousness of the doctor. “ I 
had supposed they had a warm mutual in- 
terest,” she said, hurriedly, “and with very 
good reason. And I had thought of bring- 
ing the affair to your attention before. But 
last night when they came down from the 
mountain — Weathergauge, do you call it? 
— I was quite sure from Luisa’s face that 
they had arrived at a happy understand- 
ing ” 

“ I hope not,” said the doctor, gravely. 

“ You hope not ? ” 

“ I mean that with every wish for their 
happiness — so much so, indeed, that it is 
absurd to speak of it,” said the doctor, 


144 


AN INHERITANCE 


“yet anything such as you imply would be 
very unfortunate.” 

“ Very unfortunate ? ” 

“I think so.” 

“Not at all,” said Miss Barbara, re- 
mounting the heights from which she had 
been startled. “ Not at all, when it is with 
my full approval.” 

“What,” began the doctor, in his deep- 
est tones, “what ” 

“Has that to do with it?” said Miss 
Barbara, so affable and sprightly that she 
was half astonished at herself. “Why, 
everything ! ’ * 

“I really fail to see ” 

“ I hardly expected you would. And of 
course I am conscious that, looking at it 
from the point of view of the last genera- 
tion,” said Miss Barbara, with much sweet 
condescension, “ something might be said 
about a misalliance. But we are living in 
this generation. And you have become so 
eminent in your profession, Dr. Donner, 
and have accumulated such wealth ’ * 


AN INHERITANCE 


M5 


“ Who knows anything about my wealth? ’ ’ 
said the doctor, stoutly. 

“And John being your only child,” 
continued Miss Barbara, not allowing her- 
self to falter, although feeling the ground 
less firm beneath her feet, “ that — why, all 
that puts a very different face upon the af- 
fair.” 

“Miss Barbara,” said the doctor, more 
gently, “ wiser people than we have made 
mistakes * ’ 

“ Oh, no, indeed, not in the least ! ” she 
exclaimed with assurance. “ There is no 
mistake about it ! I have not lived in the 
world of men and women for nearly sixty 
years not to know love, and first love, par 
parentheses when I see it. Trust a woman 
for that ! Luisa is a girl of strong feelings, 
and no one of her lovers has ever touched 
them before. I must admit that there is 
something — something — very compelling 
about this young man — his face, his figure, 
his manner — and then, brought up as he 
has been, his mother’s companion ” 


146 


AN INHERITANCE 


The doctor bowed. 

“ Ah ! I thought you would see it as I 
do ” 

“ By no means,” said the doctor. “ This 
is all a mistake, Miss Barbara, as I said be- 
fore ” 

“ And as I said before, there is no mis- 
take about it ! ” exclaimed Miss Barbara. 
“ My niece, who is a belle and a beauty, 
and your son, who has a future before him, 
have chosen each other, for better, for 
worse. ’ ’ 

“It would be decidedly for worse if they 
had done so,” said the doctor, moving his 
fingers impatiently on the table. 

“ I don’t know what you mean ! ” cried 
Miss Barbara. “ What insufferable breed- 
ing the man has ! ” she thought. “ Drum- 
ming his fingers ! And really it is quite too 
much mock humility. Of course, it’s a 
great thing for his son — but he needn’t 
pretend to misunderstand me so altogether 
abjectly ! ” 

She used her smelling-salts a moment. 


AN INHERITANCE 


147 


“ I am told,” she said then, “ that your 
son is to follow your profession. With our 
family connection and friends, it will be 
easy to build up for him a good Back Bay 
practice very rapidly. With his talents he 
will soon make it a fine one. The Back 
Bay in Boston affords opportunities ” 

“ My son will practise his profession in 
and about Woodsedge,” said Dr. Donner. 

“ Oh, I know you would not like to part 
with him — a son like that ! But you would 
not have to do it. For at least four months 
of every year he would return, if he chose, 
and you and his mother would have him 
here. I should surrender to Luisa all my 
right and title to this house for their sum- 
mer home, and to the whole of my cousin’s 
property, indeed, as well as to some other — 
a few thousands, but enough to keep the 
wolf from the door,” said Miss Barbara, 
with a genial laugh. “ There will be some- 
thing handsome, too, for Luisa on her fa- 
ther’s death, but festina lente , we will not 
count on such contingencies,” she said. 


148 AN INHERITANCE 

gayly. “ You, of course, are able to do 
much more on your side of the bargain — 
such are the revanches of fate — but, of 
course, Luisa’s family and social relations 
count for a good deal. ’ ’ Miss Barbara had 
never been troubled by too much delicacy 
in her life. “ Excuse me,” she said, how- 
ever. ‘‘It is not a time for sensitiveness in 
the weighing of advantages, and we are all 
going to be one family so soon it hardly 
signifies. And so,” said Miss Barbara, “I 
sent for you this morning, Dr. Donner, to 
ask what settlement you would be willing 
to make on the young couple. I suppose 
Commonwealth Avenue would be the best, 
but a house on the water side of Beacon 
Street, between Berkeley and Exeter, has 
much in its favor. And there should be a 
certain yearly allowance to keep it up, of 
course, as Luisa’s dress and her brougham 
and coachman would probably absorb the 
greater part of her own income, and she 

would be providing the house up here ’ ’ 

“ Miss Barbara! ” exclaimed the doctor, 


AN INHERITANCE 


149 


as soon as he had the chance, raising his 
voice the least in the world, “ you are going 
altogether too fast. Allow me the opportu- 
nity of saying that I should give nothing to 
my son in such an event. Nothing at all. 
Not even my consent.” 

Miss Barbara looked at him with a puzzled, 
almost a bewildered, air. “ You would give 
nothing — in such an event — not even con- 
sent,” she repeated. “ I — I don’t think I 
understand you.” 

“It is very simple,” he said. “ I tried 
to spare you, Miss Camperdoun, when I 
divined the drift of your thought ” 

“ You — spare — me ! ” cried my Lady Dis- 
dain. “ What in the world do you mean?” 

“ That I am unwilling to countenance 
any such agreement as that you mention,” 
he said, looking at her steadily. “ And 
for reasons of which you must be perfectly 
well aware.” 

The sun fell on Miss Barbara’s face, and 
he rose to adjust the curtain, giving a nod 
and smile as he did so to the pretty creature 


AN INHERITANCE 


* 5 ° 

standing by the althea-bush in the yard with 
a young man beside her there — Luisa, who 
had come down and was amusing herself 
with Penny Gower. 

‘‘Do I comprehend you?” said Miss 
Barbara. “Is it possible? Are you de- 
clining for your son an alliance with my 
brother’s daughter ? ” 

“ She is a charming child, a lovely girl,” 
said the doctor. “ I could take her delight- 
edly for my daughter, but not for my son’s 
wife.” 

Miss Barbara waited a moment, looking 
at the table, and beginning to draw figures 
there with the blunt point of a paper-knife. 
It was very annoying. But then for Luisa’s 
sake — some diplomacy. “For what rea- 
sons?” she said, leaning forward, a little 
breathlessly. 

The doctor looked up ; his eye swept, one 
after another, the old portraits. He moved 
his hand with a slight, quick motion toward 
them. “The best of reasons,” he said. 
“ There they are. I cannot — you must for- 


AN INHERITANCE 151 

give me — I cannot give my son any share in 
the Camperdoun inheritance.” 

“ Speak more plainly ! ” commanded Miss 
Barbara, with flashing eyes. 

“ There is no need of that,” he replied. 
“ You know very well the traditions con- 
cerning every pictured person in this room, 
from your cousin Launce up. Is there one 
of them who did not suffer from the family 
taint ? ” 

She waited a moment. 

“ I cannot believe,” she said then, throw- 
ing down the ivory plaything, “ that a man 
of your scientific acquirements can attach 
any importance to those old notions of he- 
redity.” 

“ I attach importance,” he said, angrily 
at last in his turn, “ to the Camperdoun in- 
sanity, which has gone from mother to son, 
and from father to daughter, for a hundred 
and fifty years, and I will not have my son 
made its victim. ’ * 

“ But they love each other,” said Miss 
Barbara. 


* 5 2 


AN INHERITANCE 


“They think they do, possibly. Two 
months ago my son was of a different opin- 
ion,*’ said the doctor, a light shooting across 
the steel-blue eyes. 44 Your pretty Luisa 
came, a charming novelty — very like he 
swerved aside. I regret that he could be 
swayed — but it is pardonable. When she is 
gone, the fascination will be gone, too, and 
he will marry and be happy with the lovely 
girl who is fitted for him, has grown up with 
him, has my heart and his mother’s, as well 
as his own — yes, under this infatuation, his 
own.” 

Miss Barbara was wondering at herself 
and her forbearance. Still, it might be 
worth while 

44 But you really make too much of the 
matter,” she said. 44 We do not regard it 
so seriously in society. A bar to marriage ! 
At home one would be thought out of his 
head who entertained such an idea ! ” 

44 You entertained it once yourself, Miss 
Barbara. ’ ’ 

44 There were two of us,” said Miss Bar- 


AN INHERITANCE 


1 53 


bara, with a slight start. “And really I 
don’t know that it advances matters to use 
personalities.” 

“I beg your pardon; you have sought 
this interview and opened this conversation 
on nothing but personalities. You have 
compelled me to state plain facts and to use 
plain language.” 

And the doctor leaned back in his chair 
as if tired of the subject. 

“Well, do you know,” began Miss Bar- 
bara again, after another confidential mo- 
ment with the paper-knife, “it seems to me 
you are fighting shadows. I think the 
trouble, such as it is, has died out.” 

“ A thing never dies out by multiplying.” 

“But healthier blood — I will not say 
better blood — there is no better blood than 
the Camperdouns’ ! ” 

She paused ; but the doctor said nothing. 

“ There has been only my cousin Launce 
of all this generation. For, of course, my 
brother’s epileptic seizures ” 

“ Do not count, you would say. Excuse 


J 54 


AN INHERITANCE 


me, they count for what they are worth. All 
insanity is not of the madhouse. Half the 
crimes of the world, and most of the crimes 
of what you call society, are but forms of 
insanity. Once the infection does its deadly 
work, those of the descendants who do not 
share its poison as madmen are the drunk- 
ards, the kleptomaniacs, the epileptics, the 
slaves of the senses, the women who abandon 
their children * ’ 

“ How you talk ! That comes of living 
in the country with no companions but your 
own notions. I don’t know anyone who 
would agree with you. Why, I won’t say it 
is a patent of nobility, because I’m not 
claiming any merit on account of it, al- 
though it does imply a highly wrought and 
delicately sensitive organization, does it not? 
But upon my word, you won’t find twenty 
families in our State, who think well of them- 
selves — who have blue blood, you know — 
who haven’t some member, near or far, in 
a retreat.” 

“ My son’s children,” said Dr. Donner, 


AN INHERITANCE 1 55 

bending forward and gazing at her gravely, 

“ will not be added to the number.” 

“ Do you mean to say,” cried Miss Bar- 
bara, all restraint giving way, “that you 
persist in such folly, that you are going to 
obstruct instead of assist this marriage ? Do 
you know who you are, John Donner? Do 
you forget the time when you were my 

uncle’s hired man ” 

“ I was hired to break your uncle’s horses. 

I broke them well. I have never been afraid 
of wild rage in any form. I shall not sacri- 
fice my son to it now,” said the doctor, 
rising. 

“Well,” said Miss Barbara, “ perhaps I 
ought not to have spoken exactly that way. ’ ’ 

“ Certainly you ought not ! ” said the 
doctor, turning on her. “ Your uncle was 
my benefactor. Your cousin was my friend. 

I, also, I was his friend. You should have 
remembered the long years in which I * 
shielded him from himself and the world 
while he suffered under the black spell of his 
inheritance ” 


156 


AN INHERITANCE 


She was not listening to him. Some- 
thing had flashed across her recollection and 
was gone. What was this he said ? He 
had been her cousin’s friend. Of course he 
had ! Why, there were those letters — there 
was that letter ! 

“ Wait a moment ! ” she cried. “ Wait 
a moment ! ” and she added to herself, “ I 
have not done with you yet, Dr. Donner ! ” 

She swept across the room to the old 
escritoire. The key stuck in the lock a 
second ; she had time to reconsider, if she 
would. Reconsider ! She had opened the 
matter out of pure goodness, she said to her- 
self, as her thought flashed along the points. 
She remembered admiring John Donner, 
more than thirty years ago, as a splendid 
specimen of a man. She had thought now 
that an infusion of this strong blood into the 
tired Camperdoun race might be a good 
thing. She had been willing to overlook 
the social inequality. She had been very 
much afraid that Luisa would marry that 
Penny Gower, with nothing but his brush 


AN INHERITANCE 157 

and palette to his name. She had always 
been afraid Luisa would do something ec- 
centric, and she had thought that the 
sooner she should be tied fast in happy 
fetters, with husband and children, the bet- 
ter. She had, to be sure, been rather star- 
tled when she saw Luisa showing favor to 
young John Donner, and then she had 
thought, why not? “There is health, 
strength, virtue, wealth, all that is requisite 
— the very thing,” she said. And she was 
fond of Luisa ; the girl had always been her 
pet and darling; and now that her affec- 
tions were engaged — Still, if the man here 
were going to oppose it, there was not much 
use in talking ! Very likely that wife of his 
had her mind set on something else — Mary, 
the minister’s daughter, of course. She 
would like to put a spoke in that wheel ! 
And the man presuming to stand in her way 
— she a Camperdoun — he who had sprung 
from the clods of the valley ! Miss Bar- 
bara’s blood was up. There was nothing she 
had liked more than a fight all her life. She 


AN INHERITANCE 


158 

was not going under in this one, if she could 
help it, fair means or foul. Contest the 
point with her ! Decline an alliance with her 
niece ! He would, would he? “ I will see 
about that ! ” she said. It was not for Luisa 
now that she strove. It was not for love or 
happiness or anything of the sort. It was 
simply to carry her point, to overcome John 
Donner ! And her heart burned within her 
with revulsion from the certainty that he 
would accept her condescension, with anger 
that he should have dared oppose her, 
with determination to have her own way, 
now while she turned the key, took a bundle 
of papers from a pigeon-hole, fluttered her 
fingers to and fro among them and drew one 
out, and went back to the table where the 
doctor had again seated himself, and spread 
the yellow old sheet out before him. 

“ Do you remember that ? ” she asked. 

It was the letter in which he had an- 
nounced his marriage to Launce Camper- 
doun. Dr. Donner arranged his glasses to 
look at it. 


AN INHERITANCE 


159 


“ If you do not withdraw all opposition 
and give your full consent and assistance to 
this marriage as I propose it,” she said, “ I 
will show this letter to your wife ! * * 

As Dr. Donner began to read, it was 
with an entirely impersonal sense. Even 
his handwriting had changed so much in the 
course of years that he did not at first recog- 
nize this script as his own. And that life 
was so far away, he had so utterly and en- 
tirely outlived it, that it was a moment or 
two before he quite comprehended where he 
was. 

“ The cad ! ” he said, presently. 

And then Miss Barbara’s long, thin, yel- 
low hand on the table, with its great emer- 
ald sparkling upon the lean, pointed finger 
that detained the sheet, caught his eye, and 
he saw that she was holding the sheet down 
to prevent his taking it ; and the whole 
truth smote him that this shameful letter he 
had written himself, of his wife, and it was 
her purpose to let Nancy see it. He sprang 
to his feet with a cry. Nancy see this letter ? 


160 AN INHERITANCE 

His face grew red as he thought of it — grew 
purple. He bent over the table, the veins 
all but bursting on his forehead, and the 
sweat beaded it in great drops. Not for all 
the wealth of all the Indies would he have 
Nancy see that letter ! Not for the greatest 
joy of earth or the highest hope of heaven ! 
Have Nancy know he was capable of such a 
villainy ? There was a grossness of rascality 
in it that appalled him even now. To have 
Nancy know that he had been that das- 
tardly wretch, to have her despise him — as 
she must — to have her loathe him? Oh, 
no ! no ! He put up his hands before his 
face, from which the color fled, and sat 
down and leaned back in the chair, white as 
the dead. 

His pure-hearted, innocent Nancy ! The 
beautiful soul, who believed in him so and 
— in all the pain he might have given her, 
he had given her, during those first years — 
had never known that he had not loved her, 
had never dreamed she had been subjected 
to such insult, such outrage ! To have his 


AN INHERITANCE 


161 


dear wife so hurt, so irretrievably, so irrepa- 
rably hurt — he cringed at the thought of the 
blow, the pain — and his the hand to deal it ! 
His eyes as he looked up were like those of 
some great wounded wild creature, blood- 
shot, and full of anguish and bewildered im- 
ploring. 

“Have you no mercy?” he stammered, 
with his stiff, white lips. 

“ Not the least particle,” said Miss Bar- 
bara. “It isn’t a case for mercy; it is a 
mere matter of business. You have to take 
care of your family. I am taking care of 
mine.” 

Through the open window came a pleas- 
ant hum of voices. It was Luisa, who knew 
she looked particularly well standing among 
the scarlet blossoms of the trumpet-flower 
trellis for Penny Gower to admire. They 
might have strolled away presently ; it was 
as still outside as it was in the west parlor. 
The sound of the voices only made Miss 
Barbara set her teeth more firmly. 

It was very warm. The doctor wiped his 


162 


AN INHERITANCE 


forehead and tried to think again. The 
odor of the new lilies came curling into the 
room ; the balsam-branch in the great fire- 
place oppressed him with its fragrance; he 
heard a cat-bird drop its shower of melody 
from the bough outside, and it struck him 
like a sound of pain ; the murmur of the 
bees in the warm sunshine seemed to be 
buzzing in his brain. No, no, thrice no ! 
He himself could endure the shattering of 
all his earthly happiness ; he could endure 
anything, everything, but his wife should 
never have that cruel hurt, she should never 
know the dishonor she had suffered, she 
should never know there was a time he had 
not loved her. 

Miss Barbara’s long hand still lay across 
the paper, and her cruel, mocking eyes sur- 
veyed him. 

“ Well ? ” she demanded. 

“You have no business with it,” he said. 
“ It is mine.” 

“ No, it was my cousin’s. He be- 
queathed me all he had. It is mine. 


AN INHERITANCE 


163 


Simply as his executor it would be mine. 
You can have it, though, on the conditions 
named. What are you going to do about 
it?” 

His boy, then, was the price of that let- 
ter. He could save himself his wife’s scorn, 
he could save his wife the misery of that 
knowledge — and that was the thing ! He 
could endure the scorn, but he could not en- 
dure her misery. It could all be spared by 
giving his boy what was now the desire of 
his heart, and would presently be fire under 
his feet and ashes in his mouth. He could 
save himself, he could save his wife, but 
then the boy’s life must be ruined. As he 
sat there, that yellow sheet of paper seemed 
to rise and hang in the air between him and 
the sunshine. It was dark all around him ; 
he heard the rustling of the boughs sweeping 
against one another in the soft summer wind 
as if it were the murmur of another planet. 
He fumbled for his handkerchief again, and 
the Liberty scarf fell out, with its delicate 
perfume, bringing his wife’s presence almost 


164 


AN INHERITANCE 


about him. Someone lifted a latch ; he 
could not have told if the sound were 
leagues away or striking on his breast. But 
he stood up, supporting himself with both 
hands on the table, drenched to the skin and 
trembling. He knew what to do now. 

He would not spare himself for the 
boy. 

Neither would the mother spare herself 
for the boy. 

It was all clear. 

“Do as you please with the letter,” he 
said. “ But I will never give my consent 
to the ruin of my son by means of the Cam- 
perdoun inheritance.” 

At that moment the door that Miss Bar- 
bara had so carefully closed flashed open, 
and Luisa stood in the sunshine that burst 
through from the hall, as if she were radiant 
with it. 

“ I was under the window with Penny,” 
she said, in a high, shrill tone. “ Perhaps 
I have not heard all you have been saying, 
but I have heard enough ! And that letter ! 


AN INHERITANCE 


165 

I don’t know what is in it, but I know 
where it belongs!” and she snatched it 
from under her aunt’s hands, tossed it on 
the balsam-boughs in the fireplace, and be- 
fore Miss Barbara could hinder, scratched 
a match and sent bough and letter blazing 
and roaring up the big chimney. 

Then she turned and faced the two again. 

“You are quite right,” she said to the 
doctor, her hands hanging before her, tightly 
clasped, and her face pallid. “ I will not 
see your son again. I understand about the 
Camperdoun inheritance now. It is some- 
thing not to be shared. I may never come 
to my own,” she said, with a light and bit- 
ter laugh then, “ but I will make no one 
else wretched with a peradventure. I will 
go down with Penny there and we will rub 
along ’ ’ 

“ Penny ! ” shrieked Miss Barbara. “ Are 
you mad already, Luisa! Marry Penny 
when ’ ’ 

“Goodness gracious, Aunt Barbara!” 
said Luisa, in a perfectly matter-of-fact 


i66 


AN INHERITANCE 


key. “You seem to think of nothing but 
marrying ! I shall not marry anyone, now 
or ever. I shall not join the St. Margaret 
sisterhood, either,” she added. “Helen 
Reynolds, Fanny Fairfield, and I are a sis- 
terhood by ourselves. I shall just loiter 
along as I have been loitering, with Penny 
for a pis aller. He can’t afford to marry. 
I can’t afford to marry — with a difference. 
He will go on with his pictures that never 
sell. I shall go on with my flirtations that 
always sell.” 

The doctor looked up at her suddenly, as 
if roused from a stupor. 

“No, no,” she said, with a swift, depre- 
catory gesture. “Iam all right. There is 
nothing the matter now. I am no more 
feather-brained than I always was. It hasn’t 
broken out yet ! ” 

“ My dear child,” said the doctor, trem- 
ulously, “ it never may. In all probability 
it never will. Only, for my son’s sake, I 
cannot accept the — the possibility.” 

“And I suppose you think I ought to 


AN INHERITANCE 167 

love God, who has given me such a horrible 
inheritance ! ’ ’ 

“All the more, my poor little girl, you 
will have need of such a comfort and of its 
shield,” he murmured, in a voice that 
sounded a long way off. 

“ I never knew about it,” she said, wist- 
fully, twisting a lock of her loosened hair, 
“ till I heard Martha talking to him. And 
then I didn’t wholly understand. And I 
didn’t want to understand ! I felt — I was 
sure — I knew it must all come to nothing. 
But I wanted to know what it was just to 
be — to be — oh, oh, so happy for one mo- 
ment ! ” and she hid her face in her arms 
with a great sob. 

“ Luisa,” said the doctor, trying to move 
toward her. And then his knees bent un- 
der him, he tottered and swayed, and 
slipped heavily to the floor. 

Sitting by his father’s side that night, 
holding his wrist, watching every pulse, 
every breath, John Donner read the note 


1 68 


AN INHERITANCE 


that Sally put into his hands, almost as un- 
comprehendingly as if it had been written to 
someone else, while the last echoes of the 
night - train went throbbing between the 
hills. 

“It was all a mistake,” the note ran. 
“Think of me as having been a little mad 
up there on Weathergauge, and forget me.” 

It dropped from his fingers as if it were a 
dead leaf, and seemed to have no more re- 
lation to him than if it had belonged to a 
previous life. All his being just then was 
centred in the beating of his father’s heart, 
all his new skill was put to proof in keeping 
him alive, the physician from the other side 
of the hills having gone to lie down, and 
there was nothing in his consciousness but 
the love for his father, the fear for his 
mother. 

The night had been hot ; the windows 
were all wide open ; the sunrise was in the 
room at last, luminous, purple, shot through 
and through with gold, and in the won- 
drous glow the great, dark peaks swam out 


AN INHERITANCE 


169 


like giants couched about the bed and wait- 
ing on the sick man’s breath. The rising 
wind blew in a riot of fragrance and fresh- 
ness, when the doctor opened his eyes and 
lifted first one hand and then the other. 

“ Nothing but a vertigo,” he said. 
“ Your mother must not know,” and sank 
away again. 

And the weeks of effort, of suspense that 
followed, with the endeavor to keep his 
mother unaware, gave John so small time to 
think of himself that when, in clearing off 
some papers, he came across that little note 
which cost Luisa such a heart-break, he was 
aware only of a sense of relief. 

He had a vague idea of what had hap- 
pened. Had there been something wild 
and wrong in his father’s youth that his 
mother was not to know ? All the more he 
loved him, and he held him in a passion of 
tenderness. He would not let Martha or 
Sally do a thing now that he could do him- 
self, nor would he let the friends and coun- 
try people who held their breath and would 


AN INHERITANCE 


170 

gladly have risked their lives, perhaps have 
given them, for him who had been Provi- 
dence to them, and had brought them and 
their dear ones up from the power of the 
grave. 

At length then he took his father down, 
well again, if still weak, to his mother by 
the sea, having written to her constantly as 
if from his father too busy at first to write 
himself. At the last she had known some- 
thing of the doctor’s illness, but also that 
he was coming to her, and wished her to 
await him ; and his wish had always been 
obeyed by her. 

When the doctor waked in the late even- 
ing, in the soft, delicious dark, full of salt 
smells and of the wide singing of the sea, 
his head upon his wife’s breast, her arms 
about him, “ We are old people now,” he 
said, “ but, O my wife, not too old for 
love.” 

“ With our whole heart ! ” she answered 


him. 


AN INHERITANCE 


171 

“ And are you sure I always loved you? ” 
“ Why, what ails you?” she said. 
“ You are weak. You are so tired,” and 
she kissed his forehead and his mouth. 

“ And you forget the dark and evil 
days ? ” he whispered. 

“ There never were any,” she said. 
“The people offered thanks in all the 
churches of all the mountain-side for you, 
the day before yesterday, but I thank God 
for you every hour I live ! ’ ’ 

And while his father slipped back into 
purple dreams again, John was sitting high 
in a cleft above the sea with Mary, forefeel- 
ing the coming of the moon across the 
water, through the silvered dusk, watching 
some far-off, lonely breaker leap to catch the 
light, hearing the deep, melodious thunders 
plunge about them and fall away in stillness 
and come in again borne on the dripping 
winds from the midsea hollows. And 
when, in answer to his sigh, Mary laid her 
hand gently on his, he felt that there was 
health where she was, and that, at some time, 


172 


AN INHERITANCE 


life was going to be good again with this 
fair, white woman, whose beauty he could 
not see in the shadow. And his sigh was 
only for the sweetness of it all — the night, 
the sea, the returning love — the sigh of the 
finite in the presence of the Infinite. 










